A forthcoming book with a range of contributors:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Adam-Quest-Scientists-Wrestling/dp/1400205646
The chapters by Kurt Wise, Todd Wood, and Fazale Rana ought to be the most useful.
Even though I disagree with the overall position of Conway Morris, he's an astute critic of naturalistic evolution, with many interesting facts at his fingertips.
Speaking of Fazale Rana, here's a link to my blog where I collected links to resources on the Reasons to Believe website having to do with human origins. They are mostly articles and podcasts by Rana on the topic.
ReplyDeletehttp://misclane.blogspot.com/2013/10/resources-on-rtb-relating-to-human.html
It's good to see a book like this with the range and caliber of contributors.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you make of Conway Morris' views on convergence and human inevitability?
Hi Andrew,
DeleteSorry, I'm not Steve, but if you don't mind, my quick take is convergence is one thing, but its interpretation is quite another! What I mean is we could argue about convergence at various levels (e.g. genetic), but in any case what Conway Morris takes all this to mean may be quite different from, say, what another neo-Darwinist takes it to mean. At least as I understand it, his view on "human inevitability" is quite controversial even among secular scientists too.
BTW:
Delete"Convergence is a deeply intriguing mystery, given how complex some of the structures are. Some scientists are skeptical that an undirected process like natural selection and mutation would have stumbled upon the same complex structure many different times. Advocates of neo-Darwinism, on the other hand, think convergent structures simply show that natural selection can produce functional innovations more than once. For other scientists, the phenomenon of convergence raises doubts about how significant homology really is as evidence for Common Descent. Convergence, by definition, affirms that similar structures do not necessarily point to common ancestry. Even neo-Darwinists acknowledge this. But if similar features can point to having a common ancestor--and to not having a common ancestor--how much does 'homology' really tell us about the history of life?"
(Source)
Hi Patrick
DeleteThanks for the response. I think that's right, his view on human inevitability does seem to be controversial. As I understand it convergence of some form (and extent) is less so. Most of what I've read is from theistic evolutionists (or those sympathetic to TE) so I don't know enough about the debate within biology. I have Morris' book but I haven't read it yet.
Cool, thanks, Andrew. :-) I don't know if I can be of much help, but please feel free to ask anything else if you like.
DeleteAlso, I think the ID guys are often quite helpful in the debate (e.g. UD, ENV).
Andrew,
DeleteSince I don't subscribe to macroevolution or universal common descent, I don't subscribe to convergent evolution. I'd add that convergent evolution undercuts the putative evidence for common descent, which–in turn–undercuts the evidence for macroevolution. So it's a bit circular. If it's true, it's false.
Likewise, convergent evolution undercuts naturalistic evolution. It's implausible that a blind process could so often hit upon the same functional solutions from independent starting-points–especially given the intricacy and narrow parameters required to make these work. So, at the very least, convergent evolution would need to be guided by a superintending intelligence.
Thanks, Steve.
DeleteSo would you say there is no way to distinguish convergence from common descent?
Off-hand, I don't know how Darwinians distinguish evidence for common descent from evidence for convergence.
DeleteI don't object to "convergent evolution" in the sense of independent microevolutionary adaptation to a common environment. But it usually means more than that. The development of new, parallel body parts and body plans.
That's a good question.
Delete1. For starters, I think it depends on what we mean by common descent. If we mean common descent without speciation (assuming standard scientific classification for the moment) such as how dog breeds are commonly descended from wolves, then that may be perfectly agreeable. But if we mean universal common descent, then that's another story.
2. I think a big problem with convergent evolution is how convergent evolution interprets information that otherwise wouldn't fit into the neo-Darwinian paradigm as, in fact, fitting into the neo-Darwinian paradigm. And neo-Darwinian theory of course subscribes to universal common descent.
That is, one the one hand, neo-Darwinism argues organisms which are more (genetically and so forth) similar to one another are more likely to be related to one another. But on the other hand, neo-Darwinism also argues organisms which are dissimilar to one another but share convergent features like humans and octopuses sharing a camera-eye must likewise substantiate neo-Darwinism.
In short, everything explains how neo-Darwinism is true!
3. Another problem is convergent evolution starts with neo-Darwinism and subsequently attempts to subsume everything under the theory. It doesn't start with the empirical data and work its way up to a theory.
Take how white coloration is a common feature among unrelated animals like polar bears and snowy owls. These two different animals both adapted to the Arctic's environmental pressures by developing white coloration.
Is the similar white coloration therefore an instance of "convergent evolution"? That depends on what we mean by convergent evolution, or what we're willing to accept into the concept. Speaking for myself, I might call this "convergent microevolution" at best. But that's about as far as I'll go.
However, convergent evolutionists would say this as an example of convergent evolution because the two animals are evolutionarily speaking unrelated to one another, yet each independently happened upon the white coloration, which goes to show how wonderfully well neo-Darwinism mechanisms and processes work.
4. Say in the future we are able to design synthetic human hearts which look and functional exactly like our own hearts. How would convergent evolutionists classify this synthetic heart? Would a human with a normal human heart and a human with this synthetic heart be classified as having independently converged on such a heart?
Or take what some recent news where scientists created artificial jellyfish<. Say this jellyfish looked and functioned exactly like other jellyfish. What would convergent evolutionists say?