The Quote Mine Project
Or, Lies, Damned Lies and Quote Mines
"Sudden Appearance and Stasis"
by the talk.origins newsgroupCopyright © 2003-2005
"Paleontologists have paid an enormous price for Darwin's argument. We fancy ourselves as the only true students of life's history, yet to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we almost never see the very process we profess to study. ...The history of most fossil species includes tow [sic] features particularly inconsistent with gradualism: 1. Stasis. Most species exhibit no directional change during their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil record looking much the same as when they disappear; morphological change I [sic] usually limited and directionless. 2. Sudden appearance. In any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and 'fully formed.'" (Gould, Stephen J. The Panda's Thumb, 1980, p. 181-182)
Snipped in the ellipsis is:
"We believe that Huxley was right in his warning. The modern theory of evolution does not require gradual change. In fact, the operation of Darwinian processes should yield exactly what we see in the fossil record. It is gradualism we should reject, not Darwinism."
Following this passage is:
"Evolution proceeds in two major modes. In the first, phyletic transformation, an entire population changes from one state to another. .... The second mode, speciation, replenishes the earth. New species branch off from a persisting parental stock.
"Darwin, to be sure, acknowledged and discussed the process of speciation. But he cast his discussion of evolutionary change almost totally in the mold of phyletic transformation. In this context, the phenomenon of stasis and sudden appearance could hardly be attributed to anything but imperfection of the record; for if new species arise by transformation of entire ancestral populations, and if we almost never see the transformation (because species are essentially static through their range), then our record must be hopelessly incomplete.
"Eldredge and I believe that speciation is responsible for almost all evolutionary change. Moreover, the way in which it occurs virtually guarantees that sudden appearance and stasis shall dominate the fossil record." to p183.
- John Wilkins
A more complete citation would be: Gould, Stephen Jay 1980. "The Episodic Nature of Evolutionary Change" The Panda's Thumb. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., p. 181-182.
- J. (catshark) Pieret
"Paleontologists are traditionally famous (or infamous) for reconstructing whole animals from the debris of death. Mostly they cheat. ...If any event in life's history resembles man's creation myths, it is this sudden diversification of marine life when multicellular organisms took over as the dominant actors in ecology and evolution. Baffling (and embarrassing) to Darwin, this event still dazzles us and stands as a major biological revolution on a par with the invention of self-replication and the origin of the eukaryotic cell. The animal phyla emerged out of the Precambrian mists with most of the attributes of their modern descendants." (Bengtson, Stefan, "The Solution to a Jigsaw Puzzle," Nature, vol. 345 (June 28, 1990), pp. 765-766)
This is from an article that summarizes the finding of a peer-reviewed paper elsewhere in the issue, which reports on the discovery of complete specimens of halkieriids, a now extinct taxon from the Early Cambrian period:
Palaeontologists are traditionally famous (or infamous) for reconstructing whole animals from the debris of death. Mostly they cheat. Even extinct beasts such as dinosaur have scores of living relatives (birds, mammals, reptiles) that make reconstructions 'simply' a matter of competent comparative anatomy. But how do you go about the job when there seem to be no close living relatives on which to base the model? This is a problem particularly when dealing with organisms that derive from the 'Cambrian explosion'.
If any event in life's history resembles man's creation myths, it is this sudden diversification of marine life when multi-cellular organisms took over as the dominant actors in ecology and evolution. Baffling (and embarrassing) to Darwin, this event still dazzles us and stands as a major biological revolution on a par with the invention of self-replication and the origin of the eukaryotic cell. The animal phyla emerged out of the Precambrian mists with most of the attributes of their modern descendants. But nature is wasteful. Most species never give rise to anything, and present-day phyla derive from a lucky minority. Many of the not-so-lucky fossil species may also be comfortably classified in these same living phyla, but it is a feature of many Cambrian assemblages that they contain a large proportion of forms that cannot be so treated.
We can see from the context that "cheating" is just a case of making use of comparative anatomy. Since in most cases soft tissue isn't preserved, it's not unreasonable to make informed assumptions about the placement and size muscles and such. But how does one reconstruct a creature that has no living relatives?
It should also be emphasized that the writer states that "If any event in life's history resembles man's creation myths" (emphasis added). And obviously it's not that much of a resemblance. These new "organisms took over as the dominant actors in ecology and evolution" (emphasis added). This wasn't creation from nothing, otherwise there would be no organisms to take over from.
- Jon (Augray) Barber
The paragraphs preceding above quote:
"An extraordinary discovery by Conway Morris and Peel, described on page 802 of this issue, answers the prayers of many palaeontologists. The authors report complete specimens of halkieriids from 550-million-year-old Early Cambrian rocks in northern Greenland.
Those unfamiliar with halkieriids may be excused. The first fragment was unearthed in Bornholm in the Baltic area in the 1960s, and it took some time before palaeontologists realized that they were dealing with isolated dermal scales (sclerites) of a previously unknown type of animal. There are no halkieriids alive today; yet in their short time they were highly successful and filled the Earth's seas.
Palaeontologists are traditionally famous (or infamous) for reconstructing whole animals from the debris of death. Mostly they cheat.
The part snipped out :
Even extinct beasts such as dinosaurs have scores of living relatives (birds, mammals, reptiles) that make reconstructions 'simply' a matter of competent comparative anatomy. But how do you go about the job when there seem to be no close living relatives on which to base the model ? This is a problem particularly when dealing with organisms that derive from the 'Cambrian explosion'.
So the phrase 'mostly they cheat' refers to using living relatives of fossil taxa to reconstruct them.
Back to the article:
If any event in life's history resembles man's creation myths, it is this sudden diversification of marine life when multicellular organisms took over as the dominant actors in ecology and evolution. Baffling (and embarrassing) to Darwin, this event still dazzles us and stands as a major biological revolution on par with the invention of self-replication and the origin of the eukaryotic cell. The animal phyla emerged out of the Pre-Cambrian mists with most of the attributes of their modern descendants.
The next part snipped out :
But nature is wasteful. Most species never give rise to anything, and present-day phyla derive from a lucky minority. The not-so-lucky fossil species may also be comfortably classified in these living phyla, but it is a feature of many Cambrian assemblages that they contain a large proportion of forms that cannot be so treated. In the 1970s, the realization started to grow that there poorly understood forms may indicate a great diversity of high-level taxa.
- Professor Weird
"Modern multicellular animals make their first uncontested appearance in the fossil record some 570 million years ago - and with a bang, not a protracted crescendo. This 'Cambrian explosion' marks the advent (at least into direct evidence) of virtually all major groups of modern animals - and all within the minuscule span, geologically speaking, of a few million years." (Gould, Stephen J., Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History, 1989, p. 23-24)
A short while later, in the same paragraph, he says:
"Our fossil record is almost exclusively the story of hard parts. But most animals have none, and those that do reveal very little about their anatomies in their outer coverings (what could you infer about a clam from its shell alone?). Hence, the rare soft-bodied faunas of the fossil record are precious windows into the true range and diversity of ancient life."
- John Wilkins
"The fossil record had caused Darwin more grief than joy. Nothing distressed him more than the Cambrian explosion, the coincident appearance of almost all complex organic designs..." (Gould, Stephen J., The Panda's Thumb, 1980, p. 238-239)
Same page and paragraph:
"His opponents interpreted this event as the moment of creation, for not a single trace of Precambrian life had been discovered when Darwin wrote the Origin of Species. (We now have an extensive record of monerans from these early rocks, see essay 21)"
- John Wilkins
"The majority of major groups appear suddenly in the rocks, with virtually no evidence of transition from their ancestors." (Futuyma, D., Science on Trial: The Case for Evolution, 1983, p. 82)
Ironically, Futuyma immediately follows this with the observation of an early example, by Gish, of quote mining. A little later he says:
"The transitional forms that evolve so quickly, and in such a small area, are very unlikely to be picked up in the fossil record. Only when the newly evolved species extends its range will it suddenly appear in the fossil record. Eldredge and Gould have suggested, therefore, that the fossil record should show stasis, or equilibrium, of established species, punctuated occasionally by the appearance of new forms. Hence, the fossil record would be most inadequate exactly where we need it most -- at the origin of major new groups of organisms." p. 83
- John Wilkins
"Most families, orders, classes, and phyla appear rather suddenly in the fossil record, often without anatomically intermediate forms smoothly interlinking evolutionarily derived descendant taxa with their presumed ancestors." (Eldredge, Niles, Macro-Evolutionary Dynamics: Species, Niches, and Adaptive Peaks, 1989, p. 22)
See response to quote #11 above.
- John Wilkins
"In spite of these examples, it remains true, as every paleontologist knows, that most new species, genera, and families, and that nearly all new categories above the level of families, appear in the record suddenly and are not led up to by known, gradual, completely continuous transitional sequences." (Simpson, George Gaylord, The Major Features of Evolution, 1953, p. 360)
The two paragraphs above the one containing the mined bit will help establish the context a bit better, I think. Sorry for the length.
"The chances that the remains of an organism will be buried, fossilized, preserved in the rock to our day, then exposed on the surface of dry land and found by a paleontologist before they disintegrate are extremely small, practically infinitesimal. The discovery of a fossil of a particular species, out of the thousands of millions that have inhabited the earth, seems almost like a miracle even to a paleontologist who has spent a good part of his life performing the miracle. Certainly paleontologists have found samples of an extremely small fraction, only, of the earth's extinct species, and even for groups that are most readily preserved and found as fossils they can never expect to find more than a fraction.
"In view of these facts, the record already acquired is amazingly good. It provides us with many detailed examples of a great variety of evolutionary phenomena on lower and intermediate levels and with rather abundant data that can be used either by controlled extrapolation or on a statistical sampling basis for inferences as to phenomena on all levels up to the highest. Among the examples are many in which, beyond the slightest doubt, a species or genus has been gradually transformed into another. Such gradual transformation is also fairly well exemplified for subfamilies and occasionally for families, as the groups are commonly ranked. Splitting and subsequent gradual divergence of species is also exemplified, although not as richly as phyletic transformation of species (no doubt because splitting of species usually involves spatial separation and paleontological samples are rarely adequate in spatial distribution). Splitting and gradual divergence of genera is exemplified very well and in a large variety of organisms. Complete examples for subfamilies and families are also known, but are less common.
"In spite of these examples, it remains true, as every paleontologist knows, that most new species, genera, and families and that nearly all new categories above the level of families appear in the record suddenly and are not led up to by known, gradual, completely continuous transitional sequences. When paleontological collecting was still in its infancy and no clear examples of transitional origin had been found, most paleontologists were anti-evolutionists. Darwin (1859) recognized the fact that paleontology then seemed to provide evidence against rather than for evolution in general or the gradual origin of taxonomic characters in particular. Now we do have many examples of transitional sequences. Almost all paleontologists recognize that the discovery of a complete transition is in any case unlikely. Most of them find it logical, if not scientifically required, to assume that the sudden appearance of a new systematic group is not evidence for special creation or for saltation, but simply means that a full transitional sequence more or less like those that are known did occur and simply has not been found in this instance."
- Mike Dunford
"The gaps in the record are real, however. The absence of any record of any important branching is quite phenomenal. Species are usually static, or nearly so, for long periods, species seldom and genera never show evolution into new species or genera but replacement or one by another, and change is more or less abrupt." (Wesson, R., Beyond Natural Selection, 1991, p. 45)
Who is Robert Wesson? According to information gleaned from two web pages, From Bradford Books: Beyond Natural Selection and Robert G. Wesson, Political Science: Santa Barbara, he was a political scientist who died in 1991, the year this book was published. [Fuller quote follows:]
"The impression that many groups arise suddenly at about the same time may be exaggerated by the system of classification. As one traces different orders, such as carnivores or ungulates, back to their earliest appearance, one naturally finds that the ancestral forms differ less than do their modern descendants. Similarly, it was possible for the principal animal types, the phyla, to diverge very rapidly, leaving no traces of intermediates, because they were much simpler and less deeply separated than their distant descendants. The differences, although basic, were not yet deeply embedded.
"The gaps in the record are real, however. The absence of any record of any important branching is quite phenomenal. Species are usually static, or nearly so, for long periods, species seldom and genera never show evolution into new species or genera but replacement of one by another, and change is more or less abrupt.
"This contradicts the Darwinian approach. Natural selection -- and Lamarckian evolution by use and disuse -- would imply gradual, progressive change, with randomly diverging lines of descent. This would make a great irregular bush, not the branching ideal tree of life, much less the record that we have, with big and little branches suspended without junctions.
"Those who study the fossil record, dealing not with equations of population genetics but with hard facts of the past, have been most inclined to be skeptical of Darwin's insistence on slow, more or less steady change. Such paleontologists as Stephen J. Gould, Niles Eldredge, and Steven M. Stanley have recently been in the vanguard of the critics."
The original quote is accurate, forms a complete paragraph, and seems to be discussing Punctuated Equilibria, but at the end a reference is also given, to page 307 of "The eukaryote genome in development and evolution" (John, B., & Miklos, G. L. G. 1988. London: Allen & Unwin).
In this latter book the section referred to discusses the Cambrian explosion and the Burgess Shale!
Wesson seems to be confused about what he is talking about in the paragraph quoted, and I'm not sure why I should take the musings of a political scientist as representative of current palaeontological thought.
- Jon (Augray) Barber and Mike Dunford
"All through the fossil record, groups - both large and small - abruptly appear and disappear. ...The earliest phase of rapid change usually is undiscovered, and must be inferred by comparison with its probable relatives." (Newell, N. D., Creation and Evolution: Myth or Reality, 1984, p. 10)
This isn't on page 10. And the book doesn't have an index. I guess it's time to plow through the whole thing.
. . . And after reading the entire book, I can't find it anywhere.
- Jon (Augray) Barber
"Paleontologists had long been aware of a seeming contradiction between Darwin's postulate of gradualism ... and the actual findings of paleontology. Following phyletic lines through time seemed to reveal only minimal gradual changes but no clear evidence for any change of a species into a different genus or for the gradual origin of an evolutionary novelty. Anything truly novel always seemed to appear quite abruptly in the fossil record." (Mayr, E. Our [sic] Long Argument: Charles Darwin and the Genesis of Modern Evolutionary Thought, 1991, p. 138)
"During the synthesis it became clear that since new evolutionary departures seem to take place almost invariably in localized isolated populations, it is not surprising that the fossil record does not reflect these sequences."
- John Wilkins
The name of the book is really One Long Argument.
- Mike Hopkins
"The record certainly did not reveal gradual transformations of structure in the course of time. On the contrary, it showed that species generally remained constant throughout their history and were replaced quite suddenly by significantly different forms. New types or classes seemed to appear fully formed, with no sign of an evolutionary trend by which they could have emerged from an earlier type." (Bowler, Evolution: The History of an Idea, 1984, p. 187)
I only have the second edition, and this is on page 200f. But note what Bowler then says:
"Darwin devoted a chapter of the Origin to explaining the "imperfection of the fossil record," arguing that the fossils we discover represent only a tiny fraction of the species that actually have lived. Many species, and many whole episodes in evolution, will have left no fossils at all, because they occurred in areas where conditions were not suitable for fossilization. Apparently sudden leaps in the development of life are thus illusions created by gaps in the evidence available to us. Future discoveries may help to fill in some of the gaps, but we can never hope to build up a complete outline of the history of life."
- John Wilkins
"Instead of finding the gradual unfolding of life, what geologists of Darwin's time, and geologists of the present day actually find is a highly uneven or jerky record; that is, species appear in the sequence very suddenly, show little or no change during their existence in the record, then abruptly go out of the record. and it is not always clear, in fact it's rarely clear, that the descendants were actually better adapted than their predecessors. In other words, biological improvement is hard to find." (Raup, David M., "Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology," Bulletin, Field Museum of Natural History, vol. 50, 1979, p. 23)
"Now let me step back from the problem and very generally discuss natural selection and what we know about it. I think it is safe to say that we know for sure that natural selection, as a process, does work. There is a mountain of experimental and observational evidence, much of it predating genetics, which shows that natural selection as a biological process works."
- David M. Raup, "Conflicts Between Darwin and Palaeontology," Field Museum of Natural History Bulletin, pp. 22, 25, Chicago, January 1979.
See, also, Troy Britain's "Feedback" article at Talk.Origins Archive: June 2001 Feedback
- J. (catshark) Pieret
But on the previous page Raup writes:
We must distinguish between the fact of evolution -- defined as change in organisms over time -- and the explanation of this change. Darwin's contribution, through his theory of natural selection, was to suggest how the evolutionary change took place. The evidence we find in the geologic record is not nearly as compatible with darwinian natural selection as we would like it to be.
Note that Raup believes that evolution has occurred; he calls evolution a "fact". And on page 25 he writes:
What appeared to be a nice progression when relatively few data were available now appears to be much more complex and much less gradualistic. So Darwin's problem has not been alleviated in the last 120 years and we still have a record which does show change but one which can hardly be look upon as the most reasonable consequence of natural selection. [Emphasis in original]
And later on the same page:
So natural selection as a process is okay. We are also pretty sure that it goes on in nature although good examples are surprisingly rare.
It should be obvious by now that what Raup is arguing against is not evolution, but gradual evolution in all cases.
- Jon (Augray) Barber
"A major problem in proving the theory (of evolution) has been the fossil record; the imprints of vanished species preserved in the Earth's geological formations. This record has never revealed traces of Darwin's hypothetical intermediate variants instead species appear and disappear abruptly, and this anomaly has fueled the creationist argument that each species was created by God." (Czarnecki, Mark, "The Revival of the Creationist Crusade", MacLean's, January 19, 1981, p. 56)
Is [the quote-miner] Canadian? This quote is from a Canadian newsmagazine, and would be relatively obscure outside of Canada. The quote has clipped off part of the last sentence, and some of the punctuation has changed:
A major problem in proving the theory has been the "fossil record," the imprints of vanished species preserved in the Earth's geological formations. This record has never revealed traces of Darwin's hypothetical intermediate variants - instead, species appear and disappear abruptly, and this anomaly has fueled the creationist argument that each species was created by God as described in the Bible.
Once again, this seems to be a glossing over of the controversy surrounding Punctuated Equilibrium. Given that many in the news media seem to have a superficial understanding of science, I'm not inclined to take the technical aspects of a news article about the evolution-creation controversy seriously, especially when I see a gem like this:
Essentially, Darwin stated that a species evolved by the random mutation of genes, which then produced variants of the original species.
The claim that Darwin knew about genes and mutation is news to me, as I'm sure it is to a lot of people. But Czarnecki does raise an interesting point. Discussing how some people view the difference between fact and theory, he writes:
Such a pedagogical approach, though initiated with the best of intentions, strips the corpus of scientific knowledge down to certain facts that can be perceived by the five senses with the aid of technology; everything else is factually suspect because it cannot be directly "observed" - so much for paleontology (fossil study) and all of nuclear physics.
And a few sentences later:
What about history? Past events cannot be observed, records of them are just fallible memories, words - just like the Bible, in fact.
- Jon (Augray) Barber
"Eldredge and Gould, by contrast, decided to take the record at face value. On this view, there is little evidence of modification within species, or of forms intermediate between species because neither generally occurred. A species forms and evolves almost instantaneously (on the geological timescale) and then remains virtually unchanged until it disappears, yielding its habitat to a new species." (Smith, Peter J., "Evolution's Most Worrisome Questions," Review of Life Pulse by Niles Eldredge, New Scientist, 1987, p. 59)
First of all, a complaint. "New Scientist" magazine is a weekly, so there are about 50 issues to check through, to find "page 59". I found this particular one in the 19 November 1987 issue (volume 116, number 1587).
It is a review by Peter J. Smith of Niles Eldredge's "Life Pulse." It seems to be an accurate quotation. Perhaps I should also note this additional sentence from the review:
"Using examples from throughout the fossil record, both marine and continental, Eldredge thus demonstrates convincingly that extinction is the motor of species evolution, and that, without it, there could be no development."
- Tom (TomS) Scharle
[Commenting on the above.]
Again, though, this is a discussion of Punctuated Equilibrium and Eldredge's contention that speciation occurs "quickly" (in geologic terms) in small populations and that, if that is true, we would expect examples of "modification within species, or of forms intermediate between species" to be rare. Both he and Gould have noted, however, that they are not completely lacking and that examples of transitionals between higher taxonomic groups are even more common.
- J. (catshark) Pieret
"The principle problem is morphological stasis. A theory is only as good as its predictions, and conventional neo-Darwinism, which claims to be a comprehensive explanation of evolutionary process, has failed to predict the widespread long-term morphological stasis now recognized as one of the most striking aspects of the fossil record." (Williamson, Peter G., "Morphological Stasis and Developmental Constraint: Real Problems for Neo-Darwinism," Nature, Vol. 294, 19 November 1981, p. 214)
Here Williamson reiterates and clarifies the points he was making in the paper quote mined in #55 (Williamson, P.G., Palaeontological Documentation of Speciation in Cenozoic Molluscs from Turkana Basin), once again discussing Punctuated Equilibrium.
And he writes:
But punctuated equilibrium is compatible with much current neo-Darwinian thought.
And later on:
The principal argument in my paper is that when speciation events occur in the Turkana Basin mollusc sequence, they are invariably accompanied by major developmental instability...
So we can see that Williamson isn't criticizing evolution, or all of neo-Darwinism, but one aspect of it, namely gradualism.
- Jon (Augray) Barber
"It is a simple ineluctable truth that virtually all members of a biota remain basically stable, with minor fluctuations, throughout their duration..." (Eldredge, Niles, The Pattern of Evolution, 1998, p. 157)
From Chapter 6, section titled "Enter Evolution"
"There are clear connections between these varying ecological patterns of resiliency, from the smallest scale of the individual organism, through ecological succession, to the even larger scale of habitat tracking. Individual organisms and, in the later two cases, entire species tend to survive by moving around, sending out propagules to rebuild ecosystems, whether locally degraded (Cercopia on El Yunque) or regionally revamped (as when glaciers slowly move south from the arctic). But evolution is classically about change. So far, local and regional patterns of ecological resiliency imply stability of individual species lineages, not evolutionary change. Where and how does real evolution come into the picture?
"Consider the effect of Hurricane Hugo on El Yunque, and on the entire island of Puerto Rico, for that matter. Prior to Hugo's hit in 1989, the endemic Puerto Rican parrot had been reduced to fewer than 100 known individuals living in the Loquillo Mountains, of which El Yunque is one. Agriculture and urbanization had already transformed so much of this bird species' habitat that it was on the verge of extinction. Hugo took about 50 percent of the remaining birds. Though the population has since recovered to approximately pre-Hugo proportions, and is now being augmented by a captive breeding program, Hugo might very well have done away with these beautiful animals entirely.
"In other words, physically induced ecological calamity, if great enough in a real scope and intensity, can drive all the populations of a species extinct. Indeed, it can drive many different species extinct all at the same time. And that's exactly what we paleontologists see in the fossil record as the dominant pattern, not only of extinction, but of evolution as well.
"It is not just single species that are in stasis. Virtually all the component species of regional ecosystems are evolutionarily stable, often for millions of years. Of course, that's only half the pattern. Periodically, the majority of those species disappear, to be replaced, in due course, by others. One way of looking at this pattern is to see it as the ecological generalization of stasis and change that underlies the notion of punctuated equilibria. It is a simple ineluctable truth that virtually all members of a biota remain basically stable, with minor fluctuations, throughout their durations. (Remember, by "biota" we mean the commonly preserved plants and animals of a particular geological interval, which occupy regions often as large as Roger Tory Patterson's "eastern" region of North American birds.) And when these systems change -- when the older species disappear, and new ones take their place -- the change happens relatively abruptly and in lockstep fashion. It affects most of the species in a region more or less at the same time. Evolution goes hand in hand with the degradation and rebuilding of ecosystems, and the origin of new species depends in large measure on the extinction of older species. [Eldredge, Niles 1999 The Pattern of Evolution W. H. Freeman and company, New York. Page 157-158.] [Emphasis in original.]
The section is about the ways in which biotic communities are stable, co-adapted, integrated systems, and that evolution is mainly a result of "turnover pulses" and coordinated stasis.
- Floyd
"But fossil species remain unchanged throughout most of their history and the record fails to contain a single example of a significant transition." (Woodroff, D.S., Science, vol. 208, 1980, p. 716)
This is a review of Steven Stanley's book Macroevolution.
"Darwin and most subsequent authors including G. G. Simpson have held that most evolutionary transitions occur within established lineages by phyletic gradualism guided by natural selection. But fossil species remain unchanged thoughout most of their history and the record fails to contain a single example of a significant transition. Similarly, it is difficult to account for the greatly accelerated pace of evolution during periods of adaptive radiation. An alternative model of evolution, that of punctuated equilibria, introduced by Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould in the early 1970s, more fully accounts for these same observations."
- Mike Dunford
Sigh, yet another [punctuated equilibria] supportive quote taken out of context to fool people who don't know that there are varying "camps" as to evolution's actual mechanism. In case you haven't already guessed, that's what this quote is. The author is reminding that gradualist hypotheses for the mechanism of evolution have a hard time explaining the fossil record, while punctuated equilibrium hypotheses on evolutionary mechanisms make much more sense in light of the same fossil record.
This article is actually not a scientific paper in itself but rather a review by Woodroff of Steven Stanley's "Macroevolution. Pattern and Process" Freeman S.F. 1979 xii, 332 pp illus. $20 (wasn't it cool when you could get a book like this for $20.00?)
The first sentences of this article reads thus (brackets mine):
"Macroevolution [the book] is concerned with the origin and extinction of species and the diversification of lineages, or, turning the problem around with how key morphological and functional features of a lineage evolve. One of the major debates in biology concerns the role of micro-evolutionary forces (natural selection, genetic drift and mutation) at the trans-species level. Are the major changes in the history of life attributable to speciation or to the gradual transformation of lineages within established species by microevolutionary forces?"
I'd like to note that this book review is a contemporary of some of Gould's articles on the same note: that paleontology was undergoing an exciting new time and scientific rigor was being re-injected into the discipline.
Woodroff goes on to describe Stanley's contributions to biology, and the wealth of analyses Stanley includes within the volume, including "well-illustrated data on rates of speciation, extinction, and the diversification of higher taxonomic categories." He goes through the average duration of the various species in various groups, and the various speeds at which diversification occurs. The problem of the varying speed by which species diversification appears in the fossil record is addressed as:
"This inconsistency has created a major problem for evolutionary biologists. Darwin and most subsequent authors including G.G. Simpson have held that most evolutionary transitions occur within established lineages by phyletic gradualism guided by natural selection. But fossil species remain unchanged throughout most of their history and the record fails to contain a single example of a significant transition. Similarly, it is difficult to account for the greatly accelerated pace of evolution during periods of adaptive radiation. An alternative model of evolution, introduced by Niles Eldredge and Stephan Jay Gould in the early 1970's, more fully accounts for these same observations. According to this major conceptual breakthrough, rapid evolution is typically associated with speciation events that occur cryptically in small isolated populations, often at the edge of a species's geographic range." (Woodroff, D.S., Science (208) 1980 716-717).
Clearly the authors intended the reader to note the weakness in gradualism, not to doubt the fact that the fossil record supports evolutionary theory, as the little quote nugget at the top of this record seems to imply.
- Deanne (Lilith) Taylor
"We have long known about stasis and abrupt appearance, but have chosen to fob it off upon an imperfect fossil record." (Gould, Stephen J., "The Paradox of the First Tier: An Agenda for Paleobiology," Paleobiology, 1985, p. 7)
This is a truly disgusting misquote that goes so far to allow me to call it, against my usual cautionary nature, "a creationist lie". It is implying sloppy scientific methods when the true quote has only a superficial resemblance to the word and none to the meaning.
It is a complete fabrication of the original sentence by the source which was:
"Just as we have long known about stasis and abrupt appearance, but have chosen to fob it off up on an imperfect fossil record, so too have we long recognized the rapid, if not sudden, turnover of faunas in episodes of mass extinction."
I truly enjoyed reading the article cited here, too, and it's worthy of a few discussions on its entire merit. But as I am obliged to give the full context of the "quote nugget", knowing it's my scholarly duty, let's go to it...
We must first start with the abstract. Gould presents the basics of his argument within the article's abstract, which is very important to read in this context. Here is quoted the entire abstract on page 2:
"Nature's discontinuities occur both in the hierarchical structuring of genological individuals and in the distinct processes operating at different scales of time, here called tiers. Conventional evolutionary theory denies this structuring and attempts to render the larger scales at simple extrapolation from (or reduction to) the familiar and immediate -- the struggle among organisms at ecological moments (conventional individuals at the first tier). I propose that we consider distinct processes at three separable tiers of time: ecological moments, normal genological time (trends during millions of years) and periodic mass extinctions.
"I designate as "the paradox of the first tier" our failure to find progress in life's history, when conventional theory (first tier processes acting on organisms) expects it as a consequence of competition under Darwin's metaphor of the wedge. I suggest a resolution of the paradox: whatever accumulates at the first tier is sufficiently reversed, undone, or overridden by processes of the higher tiers. In particular, punctuated equilibrium at the second tier produces trends for suites of reasons unrelated to the adaptive benefits of organisms (conventional progress). Mass extinction at the third tier, a recurring process now recognized as a more frequent, more rapid, more intense and more different than we had imagined, works by different rules and may undo whatever the lower tiers had accumulated." (Gould, Stephen J., "The Paradox of the First Tier: An Agenda for Paleobiology," Paleobiology 11(1) 1985, pp 2-12)
Now, to set the context of the "quote nugget" cited at the top of this section, it is in the light of the discussion on the "third tier". Note how Gould is criticizing other aspects of his field in its conclusions and methods, a habit that is typical of most critically-thinking scientists and is a necessary and prevalent method of discourse in science. Context given below.
"IV. Establishment of the Independence of the Third Tier.
As ideas whose time may have come, mass extinction shares an interesting property with punctuated equilibrium. Neither represents a new discovery; both involve the reluctant acceptance of an acknowledged literal pattern that deep biases of Western thought had led us to mitigate or deny. Just as we have long known about stasis and abrupt appearance, but have chose to fob it off upon an imperfect fossil record, so too have we long recognized the rapid, if not sudden, turnover of faunas in episodes of mass extinction. We have based our geological alphabet, the time scale, upon these faunal replacements. Yet we have chosen to blunt or mitigate the rapidity and extent of extinctions with two habits of argument rooted in uniformitarian commitments. First, we have deemphasized some extinctions by drawing dubious phyletic connections across the boundaries. Second, and more important, we have tried to distribute these events more evenly in time by seeking evidence for slow declines before boundaries and reduced peaks of extinction at the terminations themselves. In short, we have tried to place mass extinctions into continuity with the rest of life's history by viewing them as only quantitatively different -- more and quicker of the same -- rather than qualitatively distinct in both rate and effect."
In other words, Gould is arguing for the need to treat mass extinctions as separate phenomena in themselves.
I would also like to add that in the previous section within this same paper, on the subject of the "Second Tier", Gould was making the case for the mechanism of punctuated equilibrium, where he showed that gradualism does not explain the stasis and abrupt appearance in the fossil record, which is in context with the work itself. Again, this section's particular misquote takes advantage of the discussion of the merits of [punctuated equilibrium] over gradualism. The misquoted phrase is reminding the reader that before the hypothesis of punctuated equilibrium was proposed in the early 70's, evolution was thought to operate as gradualism and the discontinuous fossil record was, as Gould said, excused as merely incomplete.
What makes this particular misquote even more egregious is that they didn't just take Gould out of context, but they engineered what he said in the first place. This misquote supports the creationist claims of scientific uber-conspiracies in favor of evolution, as if scientists deliberately ignore the fossil evidence and pass it off without debating it, which is hardly the case. Science demands that evidence be examined, critiqued, and debated, and this is what Gould is doing in this very paper, with the presentation of his case on the subject of hierarchical arrangements of mass extinctions in relation to other evolutionary changes!
What does Gould's good criticism and scholarship have to do with the implied-sloppy-scientific-method-mangled quote nugget above?
Absolutely nothing.
- Deanne (Lilith) Taylor
"Paleontologists ever since Darwin have been searching (largely in vain) for the sequences of insensibly graded series of fossils that would stand as examples of the sort of wholesale transformation of species that Darwin envisioned as the natural product of the evolutionary process. Few saw any reason to demur - though it is a startling fact that ...most species remain recognizably themselves, virtually unchanged throughout their occurrence in geological sediments of various ages." (Eldredge, Niles, "Progress in Evolution?" New Scientist, vol. 110, 1986, p. 55)
At least this one gives a volume number. It is from the issue of 5 June 1986 (volume 110, number 1511), pages 54-57.
To fill in the ellipsis:
" -- though it is a startling fact that, of the half dozen reviews of the On the Origins of Species written by paleontologists that I have seen, all take Darwin to task for failing to recognize that most species remain recognizably themselves, virtually unchanged throughout their occurrence in geological sediments of various ages."
The sub-heading of this article (presumably written by the editor?) summarizes the article as:
"Darwin was right to regard natural selection as the only rational explanation for the design we see in nature. But he was wrong to abandon the notion of species as real entities."
- Tom (TomS) Scharle
[Commenting on the above.]
As is the case with most, if not all, of the quotes taken from Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge, this passage involves their idea of Punctuated Equilibrium, which postulates that speciation occurs "quickly" (in geologic terms) in small isolated parts of the whole population. If that is true, we would expect examples of modification within species to be rare in the fossil record. Eldredge appears to be chiding paleontologists in the past for having noted, on the one hand, that the finely graded changes, that should have been evident if Darwin's was right that speciation occurred through slow change throughout the entire population, were missing, but failing, on the other hand, to challenge Darwin's idea of how speciation occurs. It is, again, an attempt to use a debate between scientists on a technical issue to unfairly portray the state of the evidence for evolution.
- J. (catshark) Pieret
"In other words, when the assumed evolutionary processes did not match the pattern of fossils that they were supposed to have generated, the pattern was judged to be 'wrong.' A circular argument arises: interpret the fossil record in terms of a particular theory of evolution, inspect the interpretation, and note that it confirms the theory. Well, it would, wouldn't it? ...As is now well known, most fossil species appear instantaneously in the record, persist for some millions of years virtually unchanged, only to disappear abruptly - the 'punctuated equilibrium' pattern of Eldredge and Gould." (Kemp, Tom S., "A Fresh Look at the Fossil Record," New Scientist, vol. 108, 1985, pp. 66-67)
In the paragraph this quote is taken from, Kemp is criticizing the claim that the fossil record is incomplete because it does not support gradualism. But the full quote is more illuminating:
The fact that the fossil data did not, on the whole, seem to fit this prevailing model of the process of evolution - for example, in the absence of intermediate forms and of gradually changing lineages over millions of years - was readily explained by the notorious incompleteness of the fossil record. In other words, when the assumed evolutionary processes did not match the pattern of fossils that they were supposed to have generated, the pattern was judged to be "wrong". A circular argument arises: interpret the fossil record in terms of a particular theory of evolution, inspect the interpretation, and note that it confirms the theory. Well, it would, wouldn't it?
Spearheaded by this extraordinary journal, palaeontology is now looking at what it actually finds, not what it is told that it is supposed to find. As is now well known, most fossil species appear instantaneously in the record, persist for some millions of years virtually unchanged, only to disappear abruptly - the "punctuated equilibrium" pattern of Eldredge and Gould. Irrespective of one's view of the biological causes of such a pattern (and there continues to be much debate about this), it leads in practice to description of long-term evolution, or macroevolution, in terms of the differential survival, extinction and proliferation of species. The species is the unit of evolution.
Note that Kemp states that the fossil record "leads in practice to description of long-term evolution..."
- Jon (Augray) Barber
[Editor's note: In addition to being used to claim that "Sudden Appearance and Stasis" in the fossil record is an artifact of special creation, this quote mine is also used to "support" claims that geology has to assume evolution in order to derive dates from the fossil sequence, while the sequence is used as evidence of evolution, resulting in faulty circular reasoning.]
Representative miners in the "circular reasoning" sense: Evolution Cruncher: Chapter 12: Fossils and Strata, Watchman Magazine: Interpreting the Geologic Column, Creation Moments: The Genesis Flood, and Northside Church of Christ: Geologic Column: Circular Argumentation
Notice that this particular quote mine is frequently grouped together with another:
And this poses something of a problem: If we date the rocks by their fossils, how can we then turn around and talk about patterns of evolutionary change through time in the fossil record?" - Niles Eldredge in Time Frames: The Rethinking of Darwinian Evolution and the Theory of Punctuated Equilibria, pp. 51, 52, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985)
By taking these out of context, it is made to superficially appear that they support the creationist claims of circuity of reasoning in that fossils date rocks which date fossils which date rock, etc. Henry Morris in "The Vanishing Case for Evolution" (Impact 156) explicitly claims that this quote is about such circular reasoning. Under the heading "No Order in the Fossils," Morris claims:
Not only are there no true transitional forms in the fossils; there is not even any general evidence of evolutionary progression in the actual fossil sequences (two quotes omitted). The superficial appearance of an evolutionary pattern in the fossil record has actually been imposed on it by the fact that the rocks containing the fossils have themselves been "dated" by their fossils.
That is followed by the two above quotes. The quote from Eldredge is not about dating and is flagrantly out of context (See Quote #3.6). The quote by Kemp is also out of context and, what is worse, it is not even about dating of fossils or geologic strata. The issue of the age of either the fossils or the rocks which contain them is not in any way addressed in this short article from the "Forum" section of the magazine.
What is being discussed are issues of the tempo and mode of evolution: how evolution proceeds and at what pace, not when the fossilized organisms lived. In other words this is really a punctuated equilibria quote. It is not unusual for those advocating new paradigms to think of themselves as the ones who finally bothered to pay attention to the evidence. Dr. Kemp is a supporter of punctuated equilibria which in 1985 was still a relatively new paradigm for paleontology.
The journal Paleobiology is 10 years old, and has celebrated the anniversary with a special number (vol. 11, no 1) devoted to a collection of invited reviews of the leading topics in paleobiological research. As the editors say, justifiably if a trifle immodestly, "the wealth and quality of innovative and provocative scientific papers that have appeared in Paleobiology over the past 10 years have provided a de facto definition for both its subject area and its mission.
And what exactly is that mission? Briefly, it seems to me, to propagate the view the fossils provide information about evolution that can be used to generate and test theory. That statement may appear obvious: after all, it is roughly what all sciences are supposed to do, and palaeontology has always been accepted as a science. But it actually represents something of a conceptual revolution in the subject.
Before the early 1970s, most paleontologists interpreted their fossil record in the light of the prevailing view of how evolution works, the NeoDarwinian, or synthetic theory. Thus, they attributed differences in the fossils found at different points in geologic time to natural selection acting on individual organism, causing a gradual evolutionary change in a more or less continuous fashion. Species became extinct, they said, because of competition from other, better adopted species. Even whole taxonomic groups competed with one another, to the advantage of some and the demise of others. New species arose by gradual transformation of a species, largely in response to environmental changes. Even mass extinctions resulted from a simple loss of fitness following a change in the environment.
And so on. He also explicitly discusses the "'punctuated equilibrium' pattern of Eldredge and Gould." Dr. Kemp is concerned that those who dig fossils use those fossils to discover what really happened and not impose on those fossils what theorists expect of those fossils. And he sees the journal Paleobiology as a place for scientists to tell what the fossils say.
. . . But the observed pattern of the fossils, as evidence of what really happened, must be as necessary a part of testing hypotheses about the evolutionary process as any amount of genetic and ecological knowledge about living organisms.
- Mike Hopkins
"The old Darwinian view of evolution as a ladder of more and more efficient forms leading up to the present is not borne out by the evidence. Most changes are random rather than systematic modifications, until species drop out. There is no sign of directed order here. Trends do occur in many lines, but they are not the rule." (Newell, N. D., "Systematics and Evolution," 1984, p. 10)
Let it be noted that almost everybody says this is true. But Darwinism never did require "more and more efficient forms", right from the get-go. That was Lamarck's theory.
- John Wilkins
"Well-represented species are usually stable throughout their temporal range, or alter so little and in such superficial ways (usually in size alone), that an extrapolation of observed change into longer periods of geological time could not possibly yield the extensive modifications that mark general pathways of evolution in larger groups. Most of the time, when the evidence is best, nothing much happens to most species." (Gould Stephen J., "Ten Thousand Acts of Kindness," Natural History, 1988, p. 14)
First, some context:
"Many people think that fossils, almost by definition, are rare and precious. (Some are, of course . . .) . . . But most ordinary fossils . . . are . . . abundant parts of their geological strata. . . The fossils are beautiful, and they are tempting. But they are also plentiful. . . .
Then the quote with the unmarked deletion restored and the following paragraph in its entirely:
"This extraordinary abundance of some fossils illustrates something important about the history of life. Evolution is a theory about change through time -- "descent with modification," in Darwin's words. Yet when fossils are most abundant during substantial stretches of time, well-represented species are usually stable throughout their temporal range or alter so little and in such superficial ways (usually in size alone) that an extrapolation of observed change into longer periods of geological time could not possibly yield the extensive modifications that mark general pathways of evolution in larger groups. Most of the time, when the evidence is best, nothing much happens to most species.
Niles Eldredge and I have tried to resolve this paradox with our theory of punctuated equilibrium. We hold that most evolution is concentrated in events of speciation, the separation and splitting off of an isolated population from a persisting ancestral stock. These events of splitting are glacially slow when measured on the scale of a human life -- usually thousands of years. But slow in our terms can be instantaneous in geological perspective. A thousand years is one-tenth of one percent of a million years, and a million years is a good deal less than average for the duration of most fossil species. Thus, if species tend to arise in a few thousand years and then persist unchanged for more than a million, we will rarely find evidence for their momentary origin, and our fossil record will tap only the long periods of prosperity and stability. Since fossil deposits of overwhelming abundance record such periods of success for widespread species living in stasis, we can resolve the apparent paradox that when fossils are most common, evolution is most rarely observed."
(See Gould, Stephen Jay 1993. "Ten Thousand Acts of Kindness," in Eight Little Piggies, Reflections in Natural History. New York: W.W.Norton & Company, pp. 275 - 278.)
Even if the quote-miner disagrees with Gould's and Eldredge's explanation for the state of the fossil record, to edit what they wrote to make it appear that they have no explanation is deeply dishonest.
- J. (catshark) Pieret
"Stasis, or nonchange, of most fossil species during their lengthy geological lifespans was tacitly acknowledged by all paleontologists, but almost never studied explicitly because prevailing theory treated stasis as uninteresting nonevidence for nonevolution. ...The overwhelming prevalence of stasis became an embarrassing feature of the fossil record, best left ignored as a manifestation of nothing (that is, nonevolution). (Gould, Stephen J., "Cordelia's Dilemma," Natural History, 1993, p. 15)
First of all, a more accessible source for this quote is: Gould, Stephen J. 1995. "Cordelia's Dilemma", Dinosaur in a Haystack. New York: Harmony Books, p. 127-128.
Note that the above starts with the unmarked deletion of "Before Niles Eldredge and I proposed the theory of punctuated equilibrium in 1972, the . . .".
The very next paragraph is, in its entirely:
"But Eldredge and I proposed that stasis should be an expected and interesting norm (not an embarrassing failure to detect change), and that evolution should be concentrated in brief episodes of branching speciation. Under our theory, stasis became interesting and worthy of documentation -- as a norm disrupted by rare events of change. We took as the motto of punctuated equilibrium: "Stasis is data." (One might quibble about the grammar, but I think we won the conceptual battle.) Punctuated equilibrium is still a subject of lively debate, and some (or most) of its claims may end up on the ash heap of history, but I take pride in one success relevant to Cordelia's dilemma: our theory has brought stasis out of the conceptual closet. Twenty-five years ago, stasis was a non-subject -- a "nothing" under prevailing theory. No one would have published, or even proposed, an active study of lineages known not to change. Now such studies are routinely pursued and published, and a burgeoning literature has documented the character and extent of stasis in quantitative terms.
This is yet another example of creationists misconstruing a debate among scientists (once again, about Punctuated Equilibria) as something more. Quite simply, Gould is chiding scientists for a misinterpretation of the fossil record bearing on the tempo and mode of evolution, not the fact that it occurred. If they really had an argument that the peculiarity of the fossil record that Gould is describing is evidence against the fact of evolution, then they should make the argument openly, so it and its ramifications could be tested, instead of trying to hijack the words of real scientists. But blowing smoke is so much easier.
- J. (catshark) Pieret
"Paleontologists just were not seeing the expected changes in their fossils as they pursued them up through the rock record. ...That individual kinds of fossils remain recognizably the same throughout the length of their occurrence in the fossil record had been known to paleontologists long before Darwin published his Origin. Darwin himself, ...prophesied that future generations of paleontologists would fill in these gaps by diligent search ...One hundred and twenty years of paleontological research later, it has become abundantly clear that the fossil record will not confirm this part of Darwin's predictions. Nor is the problem a miserably poor record. The fossil record simply shows that this prediction is wrong. ...The observation that species are amazingly conservative and static entities throughout long periods of time has all the qualities of the emperor's new clothes: everyone knew it but preferred to ignore it. Paleontologists, faced with a recalcitrant record obstinately refusing to yield Darwin's predicted pattern, simply looked the other way." (Eldredge, N. and Tattersall, I., The Myths of Human Evolution, 1982, p. 45-46)
In the passages quoted, Eldredge and Tattersall are discussing the merits of gradualism, something the quote miner has left out, as we can see:
The main impetus for expanding the view that species are discrete at any one point in time, to embrace their entire history, comes from the fossil record. Paleontologists just were not seeing the expected changes in their fossils as they pursued them up through the rock record. Instead, collections of nearly identical specimens, separated in some cases by 5 million years, suggested that the overwhelming majority of animal and plant species were tremendously conservative throughout their histories.
That individual kinds of fossils remain recognizably the same throughout the length of their occurrence in the fossil record had been known to paleontologists long before Darwin published his Origin. Darwin himself, troubled by the stubbornness of the fossil record in refusing to yield abundant examples of gradual change, devoted two chapters to the fossil record. To preserve his argument he was forced to assert that the fossil record was too incomplete, to full of gaps, to produce the expected patterns of change. He prophesied that future generations of paleontologists would fill in these gaps by diligent search and then his major thesis - that evolutionary change is gradual and progressive - would be vindicated. One hundred and twenty years of paleontological research later, it has become abundantly clear that the fossil record will not confirm this part of Darwin's predictions. Nor is the problem a miserably poor record. The fossil record simply shows that this prediction is wrong.
The observation that species are amazingly conservative and static entities throughout long periods of time has all the qualities of the emperor's new clothes: everyone knew it but preferred to ignore it. Paleontologists, faced with a recalcitrant record obstinately refusing to yield Darwin's predicted pattern, simply looked the other way. Rather than challenge well-entrenched evolutionary theory, paleontologists tacitly agreed with their zoological colleagues that the fossil record was too poor to do much beyond supporting, in a general sort of way, the basic thesis that life had evolved.
Note the claim that the fossil record supports evolution.
- Jon (Augray) Barber
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