Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/5/84; site uwmacc.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!gamma!epsilon!zeta!sabre!bellcore!decvax!genrad!panda!talcott!harvard!seismo!uwvax!uwmacc!dubois From: dubois@uwmacc.UUCP (Paul DuBois) Newsgroups: net.origins Subject: Don't get mad, now... Message-ID: <1042@uwmacc.UUCP> Date: Tue, 7-May-85 16:57:09 EDT Article-I.D.: uwmacc.1042 Posted: Tue May 7 16:57:09 1985 Date-Received: Fri, 10-May-85 02:07:46 EDT Distribution: net Organization: UW-Madison Primate Center Lines: 65 > Since when did evolution stop?! Are you kidding me or what?! > No wonder you are griping about evolution! You don't even know > what it is! Do *you*? Does *anyone*? I'm beginning to wonder. Evolution says that things will change. That is, they will get more complex. Unless they don't. They might get simpler, too, that's all right. On the other hand, maybe they'll just stay the same. Wouldn't want to rule that one out, either. If they do change, they'll do it gradually. Unless they don't. They might change quickly, after all. How quickly? Well, quickly enough not to leave any evidence. Quickly enough that it appears to happen all of a sudden. Not that it really happens all at once, though. Goldschmidt tried that one, but we all know better. Things don't really "jump", though it might appear that way. But he was on the right track. After all, his views form the foundation of many of the more modern theories of speciation (that is, even though they don't have anything to do with them...) Anyway, we need variation for natural selection to do its work (not that it's really "working", though. It's a creative force, much like an artist, but it's not really. We don't want to be anthropomorphic, you know. Except when we are.) So: variation, yes, how do we get that? Well, you need a large population, because obviously the more individuals there are, the more chance you have of getting a favorable variation for natural selection to select. On the other hand, those small populations out at the edge of the ecological range are a possibility, too. Can't forget them! Since they live at the edge, the selective pressures on them are higher, and, living in harsh conditions, they're more likely to have something change than those comfortable bourgoise living in the herd. Life's tough, you have to adapt in the ghetto. But yet, you never know. Maybe those old chromosomes'll play a trick on us and do something wierd, so that we have reproductive isolation and speciation as a result, not a cause, of evolutionary change. Those wily species, they're tricky, you know. They might not come about *through* natural selection. They're just contrary and ornery enough to be the *raw material of* selection. We'll keep both ways of looking at it. They might come in handy some day. ---- Well...I suppose I've angered some of you by my satiric tone. I offer my apologies. But the above, stripped of its derisory manner, is certainly a better definition of what current evolutionary theory is about than anything most of YOU have come up with... I have been criticized for failing to defend anything. This seems to me a wiser course than defending something when I don't even know what it is. Which is what some of you are doing. Not all of you, certainly, but enough to make me write the above. Flames to net.sources.mac! -- | Paul DuBois {allegra,ihnp4,seismo}!uwvax!uwmacc!dubois --+-- | "The presence of weeds in the garden is not explained by | saying that the gardener has not pulled them yet."