A Evidence against natural selection

as the primary motor that drives evolution continues to mount, we begin to see a crack in the facade of Neo-Darwinism.  

"Barely a whisper of this vibrant debate reaches the public..."  Well, that's interesting.  For one thing science writers simply don't write about it much.   Since they themselves are often not scientists, I suspect that may be because they are fearful of a backlash from the orthodox & the writers don't feel they have sufficient authority to discuss the pros and cons of the issue.  

I suspect that many science-minded folks also feel that to question natural selection is to throw one's lot in with the proponents of Intelligent Design and religious fundamentalism. 

30 April 2013

...We should admit that we don't fully understand how evolution works at the molecular level. ...In short, the current picture of how and where evolution operates, and how this shapes genomes, is something of a mess. That should not be a criticism, but rather a vote of confidence in the healthy, dynamic state of molecular and evolutionary biology. Barely a whisper of this vibrant debate reaches the public.
 Philip Ball, "DNA: Celebrate the unknowns" [html], doi:10.1038/496419a, p419-429 v496, Nature, 25 Apr 2013.
 Neo-Darwinism is a related local webpage.

I myself dislike the idea of natural selection on aesthetic grounds and also the uses to which it has been put--such as shoring up Social Darwinism.   None of that makes it false, but I'm glad to see that some scientists are beginning to voice opinions that support my philosophical preferences.  Well, not surprisingly, I do tend to be right. 

And poor Rupert Sheldrake.   He has formulated his idea of morphic resonance in a scientific way and an open-minded person who examines the evidence should be impressed.  Morphic resonance is no less and no more vague than the idea of gravity--they are both influences that are known only by their effects.   Now Sheldrake is on record as being something of a fellow traveler and an inspiration for some New Age beliefs--but that shouldn't affect evaluation of his scientific theories any more than Isaac Newton's belief in Biblical prophecy and alchemistry vitiated his physics.     

But I remain deeply disappointed they actually found the Higgs boson--or one of them--and hence shored up the Standard Model.  I was hoping (and still hope) the Standard Model would be devastated and hence that would be the undoing of the Big Bang Theory.  

There are plenty of other ways to do it, though, and I remain optimistic I will be vindicated vis a vis the Big Bang Theory one of these days soon.  

I like the old Steady State theory best and don't really understand why a little microwave radiation is such a big deal.  Couldn't it simply be the birth pangs of new matter coming into existence as Fred Hoyle suggested?   Or the ambient average temperature of starlight?   I know there are other weaknesses to SS also, but it seems to me that a few minor ad hox fixes would not be a big deal--especially given the constant stream of *major* ad hoc fixes that are invoked to shore up the Big Bang.  

Steinhardt and Turok's cyclical colliding branes is a little more appealing than the Big Bang, but it too involves some major inventiveness--invisible dimensions and an assumption (I think) that string theory (one of the 500+ versions) is correct.  

Happy May Day

R. 

 

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