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Why Evolutionary Theory Eludes Mathematical Formalism

Thread ID: 19775 | Posts: 3 | Started: 2005-08-22

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Petr [OP]

2005-08-22 22:00 | User Profile

[url]http://creationsafaris.com/crev200508.htm#20050819e[/url]

[FONT=Arial][SIZE=5]Why Evolutionary Theory Eludes Mathematical Formalism [/SIZE]

[B]An important mathematical tool used by evolutionists has been discredited[/B]. To study [I]life history evolution[/I] (i.e., the changes over time in a population’s reproductive age, maximum size, age at death, etc.) evolutionists have relied on Charnov’s concept of [I]life history invariants[/I].

These invariants, which are “dimensionless ratios of two life history traits—for instance, age at maturity and average length of life,” according to Gerdien de Jong writing in [I]Science[/I],1 have been a staple of evolutionary models, providing generalizations “leading to an understanding of universal life history strategies.” Now, warns de Jong about work by Nee et al. in the same issue,2 the principal method of detecting life history invariants has been called into question. “The authors have determined that the approach is misleading, [B]throwing the very existence of the concept into doubt[/B].”

(Emphasis added in all quotes.)

Ratios can fall on a straight line when plotted, suggesting a mathematical relationship, but Nee et al. have demonstrated that the relationships are figments of the method and not necessarily real.  The same data plotted between groups of animals might yield a straight line, for instance, but when plotted within isolated groups of animals can yield lines offset from one another.  “The regression analysis is therefore misleading,” de Jong says.  The same problem can exist within other biological models.  Are the patterns real, therefore, or contrived?  Are they meaningful in evolutionary terms? [/FONT]

[COLOR=RoyalBlue][FONT=Trebuchet MS][B]Life history evolution[/B] is not the only field where invariants or universal constants are proposed. The Universal Temperature Dependence of metabolism proposal asserts that the metabolism of all organisms can be described by a single equation. Scaling laws (as, for instance, basic metabolic rate scale as mass to the power 3/4) are [B]called universal [/B] over all life. This [B]hankering for universal explanations[/B] has been [B]criticized[/B] not only on [B]technical grounds[/B] but also for [B]ignoring biology and the variation [/B] between organisms. [B]Interesting biology [/B] might not be in life history invariants but in [B]biological variation[/B]. [/FONT] [/COLOR]

[FONT=Arial]De Jong illustrates, for example, that two species of fish in the same habitat can have completely different ratios of sex to social rank. De Jong doesn’t go so far as to argue that it is a waste of time to look for mathematical relationships in biology, just that “We should be wary of treating an average across species as an [B]explanatory[/B] general life history invariant.”

[B]1Gerdien de Jong, “Evolution: Is Invariance Across Animal Species Just an Illusion?”, [I]Science[/I], Vol 309, Issue 5738, 1193-1195, 19 August 2005, [DOI: 10.1126/science.1117591].

2Nee et al., “The Illusion of Invariant Quantities in Life Histories,” [I]Science[/I], 2005 309: 1236-1239. [/B] [/FONT]

RowdyRoddyPiper

2005-08-23 00:51 | User Profile

Petr,

Firstly, I can't help but think that if you showed 1/1000th of the skepticism that you show towards evolutionary theory to the Biblical account of Creation you wouldn't be able to sustain a religious faith.

Secondly, this is another minor theoretical adjustment to evolutionary theory that's being over-hyped as a major blow to it's foundations by it's opponents. It's not.

What I find interesting about this article is (yet another) uncanny similarity between the specious arguments used by Creationists to deny evolution and those used by racial egalitarians to deny racial differences. Specifically, the notion that any "scientific" evidence produced by their opponents is actually a mirage created by the conceptual framework and assumptions on which they develop their theories. The racial egalitarian believes that race is a "social construct". The Creationist believes that Darwinism is.

Most scientific theories that decribe the natural world, particularly those that rely on statistical analysis of large populations containing continuous variation between individuals are at least partly coloured by the assumptions that underly the statistical models used to analyse the raw measurements taken from individual organisms. It's very hard to make meaningful generalisations about a population and at the same time stay 100% objective, because the method of generalisation (whatever statistical model or categorisation scheme you use) is to some extent a creation or choice of the theorist. That DOESN'T mean that the generalisations are meaningless or not scientifically "real".

[QUOTE][font=Arial] Ratios can fall on a straight line when plotted, suggesting a mathematical relationship, but Nee et al. have demonstrated that the relationships are figments of the method and not necessarily real. The same data plotted between groups of animals might yield a straight line, for instance, but when plotted within isolated groups of animals can yield lines offset from one another. “The regression analysis is therefore misleading,” de Jong says. The same problem can exist within other biological models. Are the patterns real, therefore, or contrived? Are they meaningful in evolutionary terms?[/QUOTE] [/font]To take an analogous example, racial egalitarians claim that the categorisation schemes used to classify individuals into racial groups for the purposes of comparing average IQ across races are arbitrary, since there is no objective way to classify someone as black, white, hispanic etc and the groupings have fuzzy boundaries. You will get different results depending on whether you class hispanics as whites, whether you separate jews from whites, what percentage of non-white blood you have to have to be considered "black", whether you decompose Jews into sephardic and ashkenazi or whites into slavs, teutons etc. Therefore whatever differences you measure are a phantom of your classification scheme, not any underlying "racial reality", they say. This is partly true, but of course this doesn't mean you have to swing to the opposite extreme and claim that "race doesn't exist" and that all humans are alike beneath superficial external differences.

Unfortunately, you will run into this issue whenever you try and impose classification schemes to divide a continuously varying population into discrete subgroups. There will nearly always be "boundary conditions" where the decision to place one individual on one side of the dividing line between one category and another seems somewhat arbitrary and therefore not representative of some "objective reality". But if you abandon these schemes it altogether becomes impossible to make sense of reality. Biologists divide the animal kingdom into phyla, classes and orders. Taxonomists still debate which of several competing schemes is more "correct". Botanists divide plant habitats into temperate and tropical zones. Again the boundaries here are somewhat arbitrary.

So yeah, evolutionary theories are to some extent a product of the arbitrary mathematical models used by evolutionists to analyse populations. Measurements and statistical analysis of population averages will differ based on exactly how you decide to group animals. But to say that this means that the theories do not describe some underlying reality is sheer sophistry.

Petr

2005-08-23 05:46 | User Profile

[COLOR=Purple][FONT=Arial][B][I] - "Firstly, I can't help but think that if you showed 1/1000th of the skepticism that you show towards evolutionary theory to the Biblical account of Creation you wouldn't be able to sustain a religious faith."[/I][/B][/FONT][/COLOR]

You are comparing apples and oranges. This could be turned right around and said "if skeptics would turn their Bible-bashing skepticism towards (publically funded) evolutionist speculations, they would find a gold-mine of material."

When evos take a beating, they always divert the conversation to the Bible, as if this were some kind of defense of their theories.

Besides, when I was younger I had to deal with some very serious doubts on the basic reliability of the Bible, which I have now overcome.

[COLOR=Purple][FONT=Arial][B][I] - "What I find interesting about this article is (yet another) uncanny similarity between the specious arguments used by Creationists to deny evolution and those used by racial egalitarians to deny racial differences. "[/I][/B][/FONT][/COLOR]

Racial differences are based upon [B]myriads of observable and repeatable observations[/B], evolution is not.

I am not afraid to oppose racialist Darwinians. They've got too much hubris anyways, they need someone to oppose them from a right-wing side, like G.K. Chesterton did:

[FONT=Trebuchet MS][COLOR=Red]"Most Eugenists are Euphemists. I mean merely that short words startle them, while long words soothe them. And they are utterly incapable of translating the one into the other, however obviously they mean the same thing. Say to them "The persuasive and even coercive powers of the citizen should enable him to make sure that the burden of longevity in the previous generations does not become disproportionate and intolerable, especially to the females?"; say this to them and they sway slightly to and fro like babies sent to sleep in cradles. Say to them "Murder your mother," and they sit up quite suddenly. Yet the two sentences, in cold logic, are exactly the same. Say to them "It is not improbable that a period may arrive when the narrow if once useful distinction between the anthropoid homo and the other animals, which has been modified on so many moral points, may be modified also even in regard to the important question of the extension of human diet"; say this to them, and beauty born of murmuring sound will pass into their faces. But say to them, in a simple, manly, hearty way "Let's eat a man!" and their surprise is quite surprising."[/COLOR][/FONT]

[url]http://www.dur.ac.uk/martin.ward/gkc/books/Eugenics.html[/url]

or Francis Parker Yockey, for that matter:

[FONT=Trebuchet MS][COLOR=Blue]"This is only the foreground, for actually the road from Darwin back to Calvin is quite clear: Calvinism is a religious interpretation of the “survival of the fittest” idea, and it calls the fit the “elected.” Darwinism makes this election-process mechanical-profane instead of theological-religious: selection by Nature instead of election by God. It remains purely English in the process, for the national religion of England was an adaptation of Calvinism."[/COLOR][/FONT]

[url]http://www.solargeneral.com/SG/imperium/imp09.html[/url]

[COLOR=Purple][FONT=Arial][B][I] - "The racial egalitarian believes that race is a "social construct". "[/I][/B][/FONT][/COLOR]

[B]And he is not [U]entirely[/U] wrong[/B]. (Very few people on this earth are completely right about anything)

For example, how many Nazis would fanatically insist that Jews are a non-White race when in fact many, many Ashkenazi Jews are clearly "Whites" by any objective physical category? Or like one net poster put it, how can someone claim that Benjamin Netanyahu is not White but Boris Yeltsin is?

Petr