Pittsburgh Professors Challenge Darwin

Syberghost writes "Darwin's Theory of Evolution comes under an interesting attack from an American anthropologist and an Italian biochemist, according to an article from University of Pittsburgh's school newspaper. In a nutshell, Schwartz and Maresca argue that change is not gradual as Darwin stated, but comes rapidly in response to drastic mutations caused by shifting environmental conditions."

Comments

Pardon my ignorance but

[BitterAndDrunk]

Isn't that simply punctuated equilibrium? I'd thought it was already considered part of current evolutionary theory. I'm a neophyte so I'm probably way off; someone correct me. (and no FSM references please; they're already hack and it's under a year old)

Re:Pardon my ignorance but

[lgw]

I agree with your analysis. How is this new at all? We've know for decades that simple mutation-and-selection doesn't drive change anywhere near fast enough to account for history. The current theory as I know it as a layman is that occasional periods of rapid change are needed, and no biologist has believed in "Darwinian" evolution for generations.

I suspect these fellows have some interesting new postulate, and the Pitt News just got it wrong.

Re:Pardon my ignorance but

[the gnat]

It takes drastic environmental change to knock everyone out of that local maximum and maybe look for a new one.

I've never been clear on the distinction between P.U. and catastrophism (not in the Velikovsky sense, though). When I first learned about the fossil record, a major point was the mass extinctions that have occurred throughout history. The "Cambrian explosion" is thought to have followed the extinction of >80% of all species, where entire phyla were wiped out. Perhaps not coincidentally, all modern phyla were present in the Cambrian era. (If memory serves there were several even worse extinctions that followed.) The naive but obvious conclusion I drew from this is that massive changes in ecosystem and depopulation of niches increased the potential for adaptive radiation as organisms moved into new niches. This would also mean that more mutations might yield an increase in fitness, since what determines fitness would be so drastically different. In a stable ecosystem, in contrast, niches don't get emptied or added and hence populations stay more static.

Is this part of the modern evolutionary theory? (I am a biophysicist, but I don't know much about evolutionary theory.)

Re:Pardon my ignorance but

[gansch]

Although this is similar to punctuated equilibria, it is not appear to be identical. In punctuated equilibria, there are periods of statis with little evolution of new species, interspersed with periods of rapid speciation in many species. This theory seems to apply more to single species, in which the number of individuals with a recessive mutation reach some sort of critical mass, at which time the recessive trait manifests itself and speciation occurs.

Misleading, sensationalist headline.

[TripMaster Monkey]

The title of TFA reads, "Professor Challenges Evolution", when in fact he is doing nothing of the sort.

From TFA:

Schwartz refuted Darwin's theory of gradual evolution in organisms with one that states that evolution occurs quickly and suddenly as the result of cell mutations.

While Schwartz is challenging a specific premise of evolutionary doctrine, he is by no means refuting the entire theory. Apparently, Nan Ama Sarfo felt the story would be read more if it appeared to jump on the anti-evolution ID bandwagon.

Shame on you, Nan.

Re:Misleading, sensationalist headline.

[greginnj]

Shame on you, Nan.

Don't blame Nan, the prof set her up:

"Darwinism's presence in science is so overwhelming," Schwartz said. "For the longest time, there was no room for alternative thinking among the scientific community."

Point one, he's feeding her the extremism, she isn't including it herself. Second, his second line is complete and utter bs. As others have noted, this warm-over of punctuated equilibria is a challenge to Natural Selection as the mechanism of evolution, not to evolution itself. Doing science is always about challenging the previous order -- it's only the stuff that's new and different that even gets published.

But why is he doing this? Here's a clue:

Jeffrey Schwartz -- a Pitt professor in the department of anthropology and the department of history and philosophy of science ...

Hmm, interesting fields he's in. Just like Steve Fuller did in the Dover ID trial, some people in philosophy of science have a vested interest in creating the appearance of warring camps of ideas rather than evidence-based epistemology. To paraphrase them, 'science is about persuading people, not proving ideas'.

One more thing,Schwartz has been pushing this idea for 6 years, it's not new news even for him:

Book Review published in 7/2000

Before this devolves into an ID blast-fest ...

[MrFlibbs]

... please RTFA. All the guy is saying is that sudden changes are brought about by environmental stress creating recessive genes, and these bring about rapid changes in a population after the recessives start combining in offspring.

The only feature of classic Darwinism that he's refuting is about a single organism's offspring being the only one with the new trait. Interesting notion, but hardly revolutionary.

-1, deceptive headline

[Stoutlimb]

How much more inflammatory can one get? The article should read "Scientists debate the details of how evolution happens." Talk about being deliberately inflammatory.

Poppycock

[the eric conspiracy]

The concept that the idea of rapid change is a revolutionary attack on Darwinism is poppycock.

Darwin's thesis is in two parts - that evolution occurs, and that the mechanism is natural selection. The first part is not under any scientific debate. The second part, the proposal that natural selection is the mechanism has been understood to be not the best mechanism for the process of evolution has been understood for nearly 100 years. Darwin did not understand genes, genetics, nor the mechanisms of genetic drift that occur within populations. This knowedge postdates Darwin's original work.

The understanding of evolutionary mechanism works at the level of genes, and populations whereas Darwinism was concerned mainly with species.

This view of the mechanism of evolution is widely misunderstood in the creationistic and anti-evolution communities, and ignorant articles often appear trying to discredit evolution based on a fundamental misappropriation of the topic.

It's a shame that this sort of article was published on Slashdot - it shows a great ignorance of the topic.

ID will miss the lesson

[MuNansen]

What's funny is that this article is a great example of how evolution isn't a dogma. The scientific community is constantly seeking to improve or amend it. Insteal the ID'ers (funny how close that is to "idolaters") will just use the headline "Scientists disprove Evolution."

Whether or not you consider evolution to...

[Expert Determination]

...be "gradual" or "sudden" is a function of the granularity you work at. If you take a broad overview of evolutionary history then it looks very gradual. An expert in bivalves might consider the lengthening of a shell by 2mm in a time too small to discern from the fossil record as something sudden whereas most people, in particular those studying evolution for the first time, would be entirely justified in considering the change to be gradual. So please, if you're going to argue about this, define your terms.

I wrote a reply to that effect:

[Morosoph]

Given the modern controversy over the role of natural selection, the article is misleading, and the headline is wrong.

The professor hasn't challenged evolution by natural selection, but rather gradualism, as did Steven J. Gould. Darwin did posit gradualism, so an accurate headline would have been to say that the professor had challenged Darwin. As it is, it appears that it is the theory of evolution, rather than the detail of Charles Darwin's theories that is being challenged.

The article is to be commended upon the elucidation of the "dual mutation theory"; is it a shame that it did not make clearer that this theory restores natural selection to the driving seat.

This is important, since responsible editing that promotes truth over political advantage should seek avoid false inferences from being drawn by the less sophisticated.

Faithfully,

Not a challenge at all

[955301]

Please, stop with the sensationalism.

All this means is that the size of a step in a particular direction an animal can take can be large to accomodate a large environmental impulse. But most environmental changes are gradual and therefore most responses are as well. Otherwise there would be big oscillations, e.g., an ostrich has a parakeet which has a penguin, etc.

Control system 101. The guy just thinks the steps can be greater than we imagine. Makes sense since we don't get many opporunities to experience significant changes.