A Long Answer To An Ambitious Objection - Yeah, I Can't Give Up Answering The Hate Mail

 

THAT DARWINISM, the theory of natural selection, is not, as promised, an explanation of how new species arise isn't something I made up, it's something that's obvious if you take a serious look at just the currently known issues involved in the change to a new species would involve UNDER THE TERMS SET BY THE DARWINISTS. 

 The evolution of organismal form consists of a continuing production and ordering of anatomical parts: the resulting arrangement of parts is nonrandom and lineage specific. The organization of morphological order is thus a central feature of organismal evolution, whose explanation requires a theory of morphological organization. Such a theory will have to account for (1) the generation of initial parts; (2) the fixation of such parts in lineage-specific combinations; (3) the modification of parts; (4) the loss of parts; (5) the reappearance of lost parts [atavism]; and (6) the addition of new parts. Eventually, it will have to specify proximate and ultimate causes for each of these events as well.

Only a few of the processes listed above are addressed by the canonical neo-Darwinian theory, which is chiefly concerned with gene frequencies in populations and with the factors responsible for their variation and fixation. Although, at the phenotypic level, it deals with the modification of existing parts, the theory is intended to explain neither the origin of parts, nor morphological organization, nor innovation. In the neo-Darwinian world the motive factor for morphological change is natural selection, which can account for the modification and loss of parts. But selection has no innovative capacity; it eliminates or maintains what exists. The generative and the ordering aspects of morphological evolution are thus absent from evolutionary theory.

Muller, Gerd B. (2003) Homology: The Evolution of Morphological Organization. In Origination of Organismal Form: Beyond the Gene in Development and Evolutionary Biology.

A lot of that listing of what is involved in the change in a line of organisms that would result in the development of a new species from older ones would have been unknown or incomprehensible in the early years of Darwinism, Darwin, himself, would not have suspected some of it.  Some of his closest colleagues, Haeckel would have rejected the orthodox view of genetics that became a foundation of the "canonical neo-Darwinian theory" because the "Modern Synthesis" that was taught as evolutionary dogma before the turn of this century and is still the prevailing concept of evolutionary science today when it, as well, is known to be inadequate.  Haeckel, with the approval of all of the Darwinists I checked, said that Darwin and he agreed on the inheritance of acquired traits in line with Lamarck, something that almost to a person current champions of Darwin claim he didn't believe in, though he, himself, published a theory in line with that.  Darwinist's must be some of the most lax readers of their hero in the history of ideological warfare.

I have been reading and thinking about an article by the evolutionary scientist  David Sloan Wilson that is a good example of how all hell breaks loose when biologists claim a permission for them to break all the rules and extend the results universally.   

After an apt and justifiable criticism of Walrausian 19th and 20th century economics coming up with a superficial and rather stupid attempt to make economics into a science like the then prevailing Newtonian physics was, he wants to substitute the very problematic and far less scientifically founded dogmas of Darwinism in its place.*

But, before you read it, read the quote I started with to consider how it fits in with the claims made below. 

Evolution might have a role to play in filling this theoretical vacuum but, first, it’s important to acknowledge that evolutionary theory is not at all like Newtonian physics. Newton could provide a complete mathematical description for the movement of physical bodies because their properties and interactions are relatively simple. When interactions become more complex, our ability to describe them mathematically breaks down. You can see this dynamic at play in complicated, non-living systems such as the weather, which can be very difficult to predict. But it is even more the case in biological systems or economic systems, which are not only complex but change their properties and interactions over time. No matter how alluring to the 19th-century imagination, the project of devising a ‘physics of social behaviour’ was doomed from the start. But that’s OK; a theory needn’t resemble Newtonian mechanics to be successful.

Indeed, evolutionary theory achieves its generality in a very different way. Evolutionists have a conceptual toolkit that can be applied to the study of any aspect of any organism. This includes asking four questions in parallel, concerning the function, history, physical mechanism, and development of the trait. For example, species that live in the desert are typically sandy-coloured. How do we go about explaining this fact? First they are sandy-coloured to avoid detection by their predators and prey (a functional explanation). Second, the sandy colouration is achieved by various physical mechanisms, depending upon the species — fur in mammals, chitin in insects, feathers in birds (a physical explanation). What is more, the particular mechanism is based in part on the lineage of the species (an historical explanation) and develops during the lifetime of the organism by a variety of pathways (a developmental explanation). Answering these four questions results in a fully rounded understanding of colouration in desert species. All branches of biology are unified by this approach.

Other than the absolutely true statement that:

. . . it’s important to acknowledge that evolutionary theory is not at all like Newtonian physics. Newton could provide a complete mathematical description for the movement of physical bodies because their properties and interactions are relatively simple. When interactions become more complex, our ability to describe them mathematically breaks down. 

none of the rest of it follows anything like rigorous scientific methodology. 

Every statement he makes about the "sandy colouration" of desert dwelling species and its inspecifically claimed reproductive advantage is 100% speculative.  Every single claim made about that as an explanation of how species arise is 100% speculation, none of it is based on actual observation of the species developing, none of it is based in actual counting of examined offspring and the offspring of the next generations resulting in the generation of a new species, something which has never, once been observed, measured and analyzed with scientific methods. 

What he is doing is telling a Just-so story, which every single claim of natural selection boils down to.  And, note, he's telling us, well, yeah, "Social Darwinism" is back but, hey, this time it's a good thing!

I think that, first, the Modern Synthesis that did some careful cutting and measuring to try to fit natural selection to Mendelian genetics (an understanding of which, at the time, now seems somewhat quaint) added new complexities to the massive n-factorial problem that Darwinism is.  The current efforts to come up with an "Extended Synthesis" adds even more and more factors into the equations that measure how big a bite they are attempting to take of a largely unseeable, unmeasurable, and so unanalyzable 3 billion year plus history, which left virtually no significant physical evidence and even less in terms of what that meant in terms of reproductive success AND NOTHING IN TERMS OF FACTORS LIKE BEHAVIOR AND RANDOM CHANCE EVENTS.  

It seems to me the problem for the alleged scientific study of evolution seems to grow ever bigger by what seems to be an increasingly large number of variables with every passing decade.  The problems are ever larger not smaller and even the original problems have never really been addressed honestly by biologists with a vested interest in pretending the ever increasing uncertainty of it is actually resulting in  greater lucidity.

And now people like David Sloan Wilson want to pretend that they can use Darwinism - in their preferred extension of it into uncertainty - in something totally unlike questions of physiology and genetics, something as man-made and artificial as economic structures and behaviors.  

* I could point to the really dangerous and disturbing attempts of the likes of Oliver Wendell Holmes jr. to come up with something like that to govern not only legal theory but the working methods of judges and "justices" in a scientific administration of the law.   His theories gained little traction but if they had things would be a lot grimmer than they even now are. 

Update:  I should add that since the theory of natural selection began in Darwin's reading of the putrid class-based economic theories of Thomas Malthus, the attempt to turn Darwinism into the basis of economic theory seems to risk the original assumptions of Malthus, supporting an even more putrid "enlightenment" scientific articulation of the artificial, late-feudal extension of the British class system ever onward into the future.  Natural selection is often criticized as a tautology of "survival of the survivors" with the assumption that because they survived the survivors were better, but if what I said here was true, its tautological character is even more than just a danger to logical coherence but to any kind of decent life.  The popular literature of Darwinism and its extension into fiction bears that out nearly uniformly.