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From: b.schafer@ed.ac.uk (Burkhard)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: IS A NEW THEORY OF EVOLUTION =?UTF-8?B?TkVFREVEPw==?=
Date: Thu, 28 Mar 2024 01:26:12 +0000
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John Harshman wrote:

> On 3/27/24 2:42 PM, Burkhard wrote:
>> John Harshman wrote:
>> 
>>> On 3/27/24 9:25 AM, Burkhard wrote:
>>>> Ron Dean wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> "A new wave of scientists argues that mainstream evolutionary theory 
>>>>> needs an urgent overhaul. Their opponents have dismissed them as 
>>>>> misguided careerists – and the conflict may determine the future of 
>>>>> biology....Strange as it sounds, scientists still do not know the 
>>>>> answers to some of the most basic questions about how life on Earth 
>>>>> evolved. Take eyes, for instance. Where do they come from, exactly? 
>>>>> The usual explanation of how we got these stupendously complex 
>>>>> organs rests.
>>>>
>>>>> "https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/jun/28/do-we-need-a-new-theory-of-evolution
>>>>>  >
>>>>> DOES EVOLUTION THEORY NEED A RETHINK?
>>>>
>>>>> https://www.nature.com/articles/514161a
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I'd say your source gives a very good and balanced answer: No. And not
>>>> because there is anything wrong with the ideas that these "dissenters"
>>>> have, but because none of this is massively new. Most of their ideas
>>>> looked extremely familiar to me from high school biology, even though 
>>>> the vocabulary is new, and that is almost 40 years old. All successful
>>>> theories change and adapt over time - they too evolve - and just as with
>>>> species, it is not always straightforward to say if speciation has
>>>> occurred, or if it is merely  a new variant of something familiar.
>>>> Ultimately not a very interesting question, more a semantic 
>>>> convention that is of use mainly for historians of science.  As the 
>>>> paper argues, one could also ask if neutral evolution and the 
>>>> recognition of drift already lead to something that should get its 
>>>> own name. As far as
>>>> I can see, all the things the "new" synthesis would add are already 
>>>> done. Maybe not as much as some of its advocates would like, but 
>>>> that's merely an issue of emphasis and focus. And yes, it would be 
>>>> nice if we could for some of them include them in the rigorous formal
>>>> treatment that we already have for other aspects of the theory, but
>>>> the resulting complexity may be just too much to handle with current 
>>>> computational tools. Mathematical models always idealise
>>>> and simplify, in all sciences ("idea gas" etc), that's just life
>> 
>>> One might suggest that the basic idea of niche construction is 
>>> implicit in Darwin's story of the bear skimming insects off a lake's 
>>> surface.
>> 
>> shush!! We don't talk about the whale-bear, ever, it's an ill omen.
>> Yours most faithfully, Chas Lyell
>> 
> Did Lyell misunderstand Darwin's bear argument, the same way modern 
> creationists do?

I don't think so - rather, they exchanged several letters about this, 
and Lyell warned Darwin that this example was bound to be misunderstood.
Darwin agreed in parts, which led to the reformulations it in later
 editions, but Darwin was adamant to keep it in some form - only 
later to regret it in a follow-up letter to Lyell, where he then
used the term "ill omen"

Going back to the real issue though, I'm not sure it's quite what they mean
with niche construction - at least the way I understand them - because 
there is no feedback loop from the effect that the bear has on its 
environment and subsequent selection pressures. IIRC the example we got in 
 school were beavers: they are adapted for semi-aquatic life, AND create more
semi-aquatic environments through their building activity which then again acts
on the beaver and increases the pressure on those less well adapted etc. 
Or humans. -NS is different in an environment with hospitals than one without