Re: Nature magazine article- On niches and neutralities

[John Kineman <***>]

Yes, but let me clarify, I don't think the mechanistic explanations are
correct, i.e., that passive selection of random genetic novelties, each
incrementally conferring such sufficient advantage across a wide enough
population to remain exclusive or even dominant in the gene pool, as
would be required by this view, is at all a rational position. The
problem is choosing a case where we have strong evidence to say that,
then arguing what we really think went on with seasonal adaptation in
plants from a view that includes the influence of functions. The passive
selection theory is deferred to so much on faith at present, that it is
hard to challenge it's reasonableness without sounding like a
creationist. The causal chain of deterministic events involved in that
mechanical theory, tennuous as it seems intuitively, is nevertheless
widely maintained and evidence of the current seasonal behavior of
plants does not itself challenge the explantion, because a this point
the reactions to autumn conditions that confer advantage are indeed
largely encoded into the structure. We don't have evidence on the
evolutionary history of winners and losers to separate the explanations
without looking at the molecular level, which I am not too well versed on.

this reminds me of the earlier reference someone made to Gould's book
"Full House." I was rather disgusted with his supposedly clever argument
about chance using baseball analogies. His argument was the apparent
directionality in evolution was a mere illusion resulting from the
statistics of filling out the possibility space (my paraphrasing). It
dismissed any possible effect organisms might have on the possibilities
and assumed they are all pre-ordaned. My feeling was that one of the
most interesting writers and thinkers in evolution has passed over the
hill. It was a defense of passive random process and an ardent denial of
any functional determination; but the argument didn't hold up in my opinion.

Judith Rosen wrote:

> John K was referring to the paper on Anticipatory Systems we are
> "co-writing" for his ISSS conference in July. We both agree on the fuction
> issue, the difference of opinion is in how to illustrate anticipatory
> behavior in organisms in a way that cannot be interpreted mechanistically as
> well. In other words: irrefutable proof. My contention is that the behavior
> exhibited by plants in temperate climate zones, at the autumnal change, is
> proof. John K. believes that all the seasonal behaviors associated with
> plants in temperate zones can be explained with current mechanistic
> paradigms.
>
> Judith
>
>
>
> > Dan Fiscus wrote:
> > On a "something completely different" topic (and Juidth I
> > don't remember that Monty Python episode...) I do not totally
> > get John's last point about solving evolutionary problems
> > functionally vs (what you may be saying) a case by case or
> > piecemeal (or mechanistic?) type of evolution. Can you say
> > more on this? It sounds interesting...

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© 2004 John J. Kineman
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