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Path: utzoo!linus!sidney
From: sidney@linus.UUCP (Sidney Markowitz)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: Re: Jai Alai
Message-ID: <385@linus.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 17-May-85 22:55:50 EDT
Article-I.D.: linus.385
Posted: Fri May 17 22:55:50 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 19-May-85 08:19:37 EDT
References: <1091@uwmacc.UUCP>
Reply-To: sidney@linus.UUCP (Sidney Markowitz)
Distribution: net
Organization: The MITRE Corporation, Bedford, MA
Lines: 157
Summary: 

In article <1091@uwmacc.UUCP> dubois@uwmacc.UUCP (Paul DuBois) writes:
>
>Some statements have been made in this newsgroup recently that seem to
>me somewhat reckless.  Ron Kukuk posted the following:
>
>>>        10.  All  species  appear   perfectly   developed,   not   half
>>>             developed.  They show design [a]. There are no examples of
>>>             half-developed feathers, eyes [b],
>
>Which prompted these two replies:
>
>> [Jeff Sonntag]
>>     No half-developed eyes?  Numerous single-cell animals have
>> half-developed eyes.  Some multi-cellular animals have *very* simple eyes.
>
>> [Keith Doyle]
>> Depends on how you look at it.  All species appear half developed,
>> depending on what you think they are developing toward.
>
>I think that neither of these statements is worthy of serious
>consideration until they are given some support.  (For instance, Mr.
>Sonntag can give the phylogeny of vision.  Mr. Doyle can show what
>half-developed visual structures turn into.)

Sonntag and Doyle's statements both contain the fallacy of accepting the
fallacy in Kuluk's posting. When the pamphlet he's quoting says "All species
appear perfectly developed, not half developed," there is no definition
given for degree of development. One possibility is subjective. But then, a
creationist could look at the simplest amoeba and say "There is a perfectly
developed amoeba, each part perfectly developed for its role as part of an
amoeba," and that would be an unarguable matter of opinion. An alternative
definition of degree of development could be that "fully developed" means
functional. In that case, evolutionary theory does not necessarily predict
"half developed" eyes -- It predicts a series of "fully developed" (i.e.
functional) structures that develop from one to another. An example is jaw
bones becoming hearing apparatus, each step being a functional *something*.
In one respect Doyle's statement is accurate -- There is a way of looking at
species in which they all seem half-developed, if you are perceiving them as
stages in an evolutionary series. This is the converse of the way they would
seem if you are perceiving species as self contained, functional entities
(or creations). The point is that such a ssubjective term can't be validly
used to support any side of an argument.


[you then quote the following article:]
>Lisa J Shawver, "Trilobite eyes: An impressive feat of early evolution".
>Science News, 105(5), 2 Feb 1974.
>

>Of course Levi Setti is
>speaking very loosely when he talks about trilobites "knowing", but
>we'll pass over that, since evolutionists allow each other to talk
>this way. 

Of course the previous statement is anything but passing over that,
but I'll let you get away with such a cheap-shot debating tactic
since you gave Setti that leeway :-) Actually, there is an
important aspect to the loose phrasing that you pointed out. It
sets an informal tone to the article. Setti was apparently not
thinking in terms of presenting a rigorous argument that would have
to stand up against the criticisms of creationists. I think he is
assuming evolutionary theory being accepted by the reader. In fact,
as you say...

>The important point is that these are rather interesting
>structures.

>The article further quotes:  "'Nature has developed a
>process of optimization, which in this case, produced these incredible
>sophisticated shapes,' says Levi Setti.  'It didn't happen by
>accident.  It proves that evolution can produce this kind of thing
>... the lenses look like they were designed by a physicist.'"
>
>One gets the impression that Levi Setti was impressed.  Noteworthy is
>the statement that the eyes not happening by accident is proof of
>evolution.

Not exactly. He said it was proof that evolution can produce such a
thing. Setti was assuming evolution as a given, and saying he was
impressed by what it produced. His saying that it didn't happen  by
accident is noteworthy for a different reason -- It points out what
may be a fundamental difference between your thinking and that of a
scientist. He looks at the actions of natural laws intersecting to
bring about such an elegant effect and says something like "It's
not an accident -- There's a cause and effect *reason* why it came
out that way." You don't seem to accept cause and effect as enough
of a reason for something complicated or precise to occur. You seem
to require intelligent direction and purpose. Although I still
haven't figured out why your concept of God isn't capable of
creating laws of nature that mesh so well that a processes can be
set in motion that lead to human minds and trilobite eyes.

>Design is evidence of no designer.  I suspect that more
>reserved evolutionists would regard this as a rash statement.

It's as rash as "design is evidence of a designer." The fallacy is
that the word "design" implies a designer by definition. But the
correct terms here are "complexity" and "organization", which are
not so obviously evidence of a designer (as in the example of a
snowflake). Complexity and organization are also not evidence for
no designer, but as I pointed out, Setti is not claiming that this
is proof of evolution -- he says that this is proof of the "neat"
stuff that evolutionary processes can produce. Setti's statement is
trivially true -- given his assumption of evolution. It doesn't
really prove anything, but is an expression of his sense of
aesthetics regarding nature, which, after all, is the point of his
article.

I'll skip your continuation along the same lines and the quotes
describing details of the trilobite eyes, and go on to your
questions:

>In what sense are these eyes "half-developed"?
>
>What are (were) they developing toward/from?

As I said above, the phrase "half-developed" is not a good one,
as it is difficult to come up with a reasonable objective
definition. The concept of "developing toward/from" is misleading,
too. Please remember, Paul, that while you may think in terms of an
anthropomorphic God with a pre-arranged master plan, evolutionary
theory does not ascribe equivalent pre-organization to the
evolutionary processes. In evolutionary terms you can only say that
a species evolved from and towards something in the sense that you
can describe a sequence with causal, temporal ordering. And if no
such sequence exists, e.g., if trilobites were evolutionary dead
ends, then it makes no sense to ask what trilobite eyes were
developing towards. The answer to your question then, would be in
the fossil record. I'll leave it to someone with more knowledge of
paleontology to answer what is supposed to be the ancestors of the
trilobite. Though I do have a further comment about that below...

>Remembering that these were fairly early organisms, what sort of
>phylogeny shall one construct to show the development of these
>structures?
>
>Yes, it is true that some organisms have *very* simple eyes.  But some
>early organisms have very unsimple eyes.  So statements about
>half-developed and simple eyes don't show much *unless* the line of
>descent is demonstrated.

One point that should be mentioned -- The trilobite eyes may very
well represent an evolutionary dead end in an important way. The
trilobite may represent the result of steady improvement in the
optics of the lens. But as the original article pointed out, vision
is a result of the nervous system, not the lens. We have a less
perfect lens, optically, but a complex vision system in nerves and
brain that can adapt to a wide range of variation produced by light
and lenses. There's a fallacy in attempting to impose our own sense
of aesthetics or suitability on nature (or God, if you prefer),
when the reality of what it actually does is the final arbiter.

-- 
					Sidney Markowitz

ARPA:	sidney@mitre-bedford
UUCP:	...{allegra,decvax,genrad,ihnp4,philabs,security,utzoo}!linus!sidney