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From: dubois@uwmacc.UUCP (Paul DuBois)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: Beast of Burden
Message-ID: <948@uwmacc.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 19-Apr-85 16:19:28 EST
Article-I.D.: uwmacc.948
Posted: Fri Apr 19 16:19:28 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 22-Apr-85 01:30:58 EST
Distribution: net
Organization: UW-Madison Primate Center
Lines: 125


> [Stanley Friesen]
> In article <733@uwmacc.UUCP> dubois@uwmacc.UUCP (Paul DuBois) writes:
>>> Chapter 13 to this subject.  Ray claims that all these species were 
>>> contemporaries of each other.  The facts: Eohippus is found in the Eocene, 
>>> Mesohippus in the Ogliocene, Parahippus in the Miocene, Pliohippus in the 
>>> Pliocene, and Equus (modern horse) does not arise until the late Pliocene. 


>>Hitching [1982] comments:

>>(ii) The first horse (Eohippus) didn't look much like one - in fact it
>>looks a lot more like an animal that lives *today* - the Hyrax (or
>>daman).  Also, Eohippus fossils have been found alongside two modern
>>horses (Equus nevadensis and Equus occidentalis) in surface strata.

> 	Exactly as expected under evolutionary theory! the first of
> a series of intermediates will *natuallly* resemble the source group
> more than the end group! All this says is that the Hyrax is a modern
> member of the horse ancestral group. It is also perfectly acceptible
> for an ancestral form to continue along side of its decendants. The
> only evidence which would contradict the basic series is for a modern
> horse(Equus) to be found in Eocene sediments. Also has the possibility
> of "reworked" fossils been ruled out in the "modern" Eohippus specimens.

If reworking is to be claimed, the burden of proof is on the one
making the claim to demonstrate it.  Failing that, one may show that the
original investigators haave not considered this as a possibility.
Although both of these are possible accounts, you have shown neither.

>>(iii) Trends are not so pretty as often depicted.  The first three horse
>>fossils (Eohippus, Orohippus, Epihippus) decline (not increase) in size.
>>The sequence from many toes to one toe is similarly irregular - replete
>>with regressions and contradictions.

> 	Again, *exactly* as expected!! Evolution is based on direct
> natural selection, thus at any given time it procedes in the direction
> appropriate to the immediate environment, there is *no* mechanism for
> anticipation or long term co-ordination.  Trends are nothing more
> than time averages of succesive short term changes, and mainly
> indicate consistant environmental change over time.

Sure - exactly as expected.  Pure grandstanding, as Bill says.  If they
get more complex, we expect it.  If they regress, we expect it.  If
they stay exactly the same, we expected that, too.  So no matter what
happens, we expect it.  So, as always, evolution reduces to
description, not explanation or mechanism.  This is not very
compelling as an "expectation".

And if the response is to environmental modification (and it might very
well be, I grant you) then we ought to be able to (or trying to be able
to) formulate some principles about environmental change that allow
REAL predictions about what should happen.  Maybe such principles have
been formulated, but I don't know of any.  (If you do, I'd be
interested - and probably others would, too.  Post them if you know of
some.)

If we know enough about the environment to say "Evolution is based on
direct natural selection, thus at any given time it procedes [sic] in
the direction appropriate to the immediate environment", we know enough
to say why, and whether, hyrax split and one group stayed the same,
while another didn't.  But we don't, so we can't.  We can guess if we
want to - but that's all.

Sermon:

This stuff is a positive hindrence to science.  We say "natural
selection" and our brains stop thinking.  But until we understand the
physiological and biochemical basis of organismal response to
environmental stimuli, we're going to STAY STUCK, invoking the magical
incantation "natural selection" whenever a problem comes up, and we're
going to continue to remain ignorant.  Phooey.

We say "Natural selection - Ah!  Now I understand."  But do we?  Of
course we don't.  What do you understand?  It's a buzzword that tells
us exactly nothing except that what happened, happened.  Now, surely we
could have deduced that without natural selection.  I'm not denying the
concept _per se_.  Of course selection occurs.  But the real question
is why one thing should be selected and not another.

I don't get it.  You guys all KNOW this.  I'n not telling you one
single thing that you don't already know.  Yet this pretense of the
idea that natural selection means something or tells us something, is
maintained.  Why?  Why do you do it?

End of sermon.

>>Davidheiser notes [pp. 325-326]:  "The brains of living horses are
>>highly convoluted.  Therefore, evolutionists who believe that only
>>modern horses (including zebras, etc.) evolved from these 'early horses'
>>must logically admit that any similarity between the convolutions of the
>>brains of horses and of other animals is coincidental or a case of
>>'parallelism'.  For example, Sisson and Grossman in their book _The
>>Anatomy of Domestic Animals_, diagram and describe the brains of the
>>horse and cow.  Of fourteen fissures named, all but two have the same
>>name in both horse and cow and correspond in location.  The other two
>>also correspond in location but are given different names."

> 	You forgot an alternative, the convolutions could be inherited
> from a common ancestor, perhaps the basic pattern of brain convolutions
> was established *before* the split between horse and cow.

I didn't forget.  But just how likely does it seem to you that two
independent lines of development from a smooth-brained ancestor with no
convolutions, to two different animals with convolutions, will result
in EXACTLY the same number of fissures, and that all 14 will be in
corresponding locations?  I confess skepticism (that healthy quality so
highly touted).

One gets an udder, the other doesn't.  One gets a single hoof, the
other, split.  One gets horns, the other, not.  One becomes a ruminant,
the other, not.  But the brain, the most complex structure of all,
develops (independently in two lines) so remarkably similarly.

I can hear it now:  "there is nothing in evolutionary theory to
contradict this."

Of course not.  Because there is nothing in evolutionary theory to
predict this.  More succinctly:  there is nothing in evolutionary
theory?
-- 
                                                                    |
Paul DuBois	{allegra,ihnp4,seismo}!uwvax!uwmacc!dubois        --+--
                                                                    |
"Danger signs, a creeping independence"                             |