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From: friesen@psivax.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: Re: duplicate
Message-ID: <342@psivax.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 25-Feb-85 17:43:17 EST
Article-I.D.: psivax.342
Posted: Mon Feb 25 17:43:17 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 27-Feb-85 10:47:38 EST
References: <32500025@uiucdcsb.UUCP>
Reply-To: friesen@psivax.UUCP (Stanley friesen)
Organization: Pacesetter Systems Inc., Sylmar, CA
Lines: 60
Summary: 

In article <32500025@uiucdcsb.UUCP> miller@uiucdcsb.UUCP writes:
>
>/* ---------- "Evolutionary Recapitulation?" ---------- */
>Frankly, I don't know why Keith Doyle brought this up, as virtually all evolu-
>tionists flee from this theory like rats jumping off a sinking ship.  Actually,
>I guess I shouldn't blame Keith, as he no doubt had one of the textbooks which,
>incredibly, *still* list this theory as one of the "proofs" for evolution.
>(Yes, stuff like this is still out there folks.
>
>William Stansfield, in his book "The Science of Evolution" (New York, Mac-
>Millian, 1977) pp. 106-107 writes:  "The recapitulation theory was shown to be
>unsound even in Haeckel's day, but it all seemed so tidy that the FUNDAMENTAL
>INCONSISTENCIES WERE LARGELY IGNORED ... Haeckel's `biogenetic law' is now
>thoroughly discredited." [emphasis mine]  Now no one can accuse Stansfield of
>trying to support our side, as a large portion of his book is devoted to
>trying to refute creationism.
>
	Actually this misrepresents current opinion on this matter.
It is true that recapitulation *in its original form* is discredited.
However a modified version is *still* considered by a majority iofWof
biologists.  It is usually now stated: "The ontogony of an organism
tends to recapitulate the onotogony of its ancestors". That is the
embryonic stages of any animal correspond to those of its predecessors,
except where specialization has required changes.

>Dr. Blechschmidt, M.D. (prof. of anatomy & director of anatomy at the Univ of
>Gottingen, West Germany) in "Human Being from the Very First", New Perspectives
>on Human Abortion, T. W. Hilgers, et al, eds. (Aletheia Books, 1981), pp. 7+
>writes:
> A historian could draw, for
>instance, a developmental series of vehicles, ranging from the handcart through
>the horse-drawn wagon to the contemporary racing car.  That, however, would
>explain neither the construction of today's autos nor the methods of their
>fabrication.  No one would build a modern car by first making a handcart and
>then fabricating, through gradual, piece-by-piece modification of this cart,
>the type of a modern automobile.  Any recapitulation of outdated methods
>producing antiquated models would risk nonsensical overburdening and bankruptcy
>for the factory 

	This argument is totally inaprpropriate.  The basic tenet of
evolution, that organisms of different types share common ancestory
is quite different from the practices of design engineers. Under
evolution it is *inevitable* that changes are made by accretion,
that is by adding modifications to existing structures. This is
in fact exactly analogous to building a car by rebuilding a cart.
Design engineers use a totally different approach, they create a
*complete*, coherent design on paper, then have it built. Thus
each new type of device is built on its own. In fact the existance
of ad hoc, opportunistic "designs" in living things is one of the
principle predictions of evolutionary theory. If God had created
from scratch I would think he would use good engineering principles
and design each organism for its specialty independantly instead of
using kludged up, ad hoc solutions like we actually see in many
cases.
-- 

				Sarima (Stanley Friesen)

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