Lehane is terrific.

I'd also count Neil Gaiman in there, even if he's a cusper (born November 1960),

Originally Posted by Peter Gibbons

Originally Posted by Croakmore

You can raise the ontogeny-recapitulates-phylogeny principle if you like, but ORP has been brutally debunked (primarily by S. J. Gould).

Mr. E.,

So you completely reject everything the Evo-Devo guys are discovering and talking about? I agree that hard ORP (a la Haeckel) is wrong, but wouldn't you agree that some soft version of ORP is logically necessary? I know we've been here before, but I forget how we ended up.

The hard anti-ORP position (whether you hold it or not) reminds me of the Wolfpoffian school of paleoanthropologists wrongly taking on the geneticists (they'll lose) for honorable reasons (an attempt to celebrate diversity plus a fear of what human nature might actually be like).

While we're wandering off the subject, I'll expand a little on hard and soft ORP. This matter of developmental timing is interesting. And when immature stages engage in reproduction there can be confusion in this timing and in the results. Sometimes there are even larval stages that engage in reproduction, sometimes further confusing what gets passed down the line of inheritance.

Gould on this:

Does it matter whether we are actually repeating an adult stage of a fish-like ancestor (as recapitulationists claimed), or only developing a common embryonic feature that fish, as primitive vertebrates, retain throughout life (as von Baer claimed)? The phyletic information is the same -- we learn the same thing about our evolutionary relationship with fish in either case...I am convinced that the vast majority of supposed recapitulations represent nothing but the conservative nature of heredity. as expressed in von Baer's laws.

I must agree with Gould on hard ORP. He chased it all the way back to the barn, but its shaddow is still running around out there in the pasture.

And as for soft ORP, I'm still skeptical. Lamarck is dead; long live Lamarck.

--Croak

Originally Posted by Milo

Originally Posted by spudzill

Xer lit. Douglas Copeland,anything he writes. Brett Easton Ellis. The guy who wrote Fight Club. It's out there man, it's by no means obscure, I mean we got the name of our entire generation from Mr. copelands book. ( Yes, yes I know it has a longer brand than that coming from a documentary of the Teddy boys of English youth in the Early Sixties, to Billy Idols band in the mid to late 70's to Doug's book.)

Yes, but as much as I like Brett Easton Ellis' stuff (that adaptation of American Psycho was tres hillarious - especially that scene with Bateman talking about Huey Lewis and the News) his sense of narrative form is lacking (Less than Zero would've been better as a genuine tragedy, maybe with a neurotic, obsessive Blair blowing away Clay for cheating on her then killing herself, but I actually almost went to the same school he had gone to in the San Fernando valley [I ended up going to its rival, and went on to go to a college attended by a certain "asshole" in Rules of Attraction] and the characters in that book are disturbingly real fascimiles of people from that world) and like most of the other xer writers to date he's no Hemingway, Faulkner, or Fitzgerald (although I'm prepared to give anyone the benefit of the doubt that they could one day become that good). The one xer writer that does I think measure up to his lost generation ancestors is Dennis Lehane who wrote Mystic River. I think I'm a pretty hard judge of these things, but I also think he's every bit as good as the lost hardboiled crime writers Hammett, Cain (who wrote Mildred Pierce, Double Indemnity, and the Postman Always Rings Twice), and Chandler.

Chuck Pahanuik, The fight club guy. I thought Fight Club was the perfect story about gen X and it's alienation and despair.

Originally Posted by spudzill

I thought Fight Club was the perfect story about gen X and it's alienation and despair.

Oh, poor, poor, gen X. This is not a Harry Truman attitude!

--Croakmore

Originally Posted by Croakmore

Originally Posted by spudzill

I thought Fight Club was the perfect story about gen X and it's alienation and despair.

Oh, poor, poor, gen X. This is not a Harry Truman attitude!

--Croakmore

If you'd like us to nuke someone froggy we'd probably oblige. How about Belgium? I've been feeling envious of their superior skills as chocolatiers for years.

Every man's fantasy is coming true



Japanese develop 'female' android

By David Whitehouse
Science editor, BBC News website

Japanese scientists have unveiled the most human-looking robot yet
devised - a "female" android called Repliee Q1.

She has flexible silicone for skin rather than hard plastic, and a
number of sensors and motors to allow her to turn and react in a
human-like manner.

She can flutter her eyelids and move her hands like a human. She even
appears to breathe.

Professor Hiroshi Ishiguru of Osaka University says one day robots
could fool us into believing they are human.

Repliee Q1 is not like any robot you will have seen before, at least
outside of science-fiction movies.

She is designed to look human and although she can only sit at
present, she has 31 actuators in her upper body, powered by a nearby
air compressor, programmed to allow her to move like a human.

Originally Posted by Prof Hiroshi Ishiguru

We have found that people forget she is an android while
interacting with her

"I have developed many robots before," Repliee Q1's designer,
Professor Ishiguru, told the BBC News website, "but I soon realised
the importance of its appearance. A human-like appearance gives a
robot a strong feeling of presence."

Designed to look human

Before Repliee Q1, Professor Ishiguru developed Repliee R1 which had
the appearance of a five-year-old Japanese girl.

Its head could move in nine directions and it could gesture with its
arm. Four high-sensitivity tactile sensors were placed under the skin
of its left arm that made the android react differently to differing
pressures.

The follow-up has the appearance of a Japanese woman. To program her
motion, a computer analysed the motions of a human and used them as a
template for the way Repliee Q1 moves.

She can be designed to follow the movement of a human wearing motion
sensors or to act independently.

"Repliee Q1 can interact with people. It can respond to people
touching it. It's very satisfying, although we obviously have a long
way to go yet."

Professor Ishiguru believes that it may prove possible to build an
android that could pass for a human, if only for a brief period.

"An android could get away with it for a short time, 5-10 seconds.
However, if we carefully select the situation, we could extend that,
to perhaps 10 minutes," he said.

"More importantly, we have found that people forget she is an android
while interacting with her. Consciously, it is easy to see that she is
an android, but unconsciously, we react to the android as if she were
a woman."

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/h...ch/4714135.stm
Published: 2005/07/27 09:10:07 GMT
© BBC MMV

Originally Posted by HopefulCynic68

The large majority of stars are spectral-class M 'red dwarf' suns. They are much smaller and less masive than the Sun, and cooler, emitting less energy. An 'Earth-like (broadly defined)' world would have to orbit much closer to a red dwarf than to the Sun to stay at a suitable temperature, but orbiting that close would mean the planet would likely experience 'tide lock', in which the rotation would be slowed down by tidal action until one side of the planet always faced the star, and one side always away, making a clement environment very iffy.

This argument had more juice back when we still thought that Mercury was tide locked.

If you have the right sort of star, you then you need a planet in the right place. Based on observations of other star systems, it appears that big gas giants have tendency in many cases to go strolling downhil to take up orbit close to the star. If that happens, worlds in the 'Goldilocks Zone' tend to get either thrown into the star or out into interstellar space.

The systems we can see are biased towards large planets/close to sum. We cannot detect the existence of a Sol-type system as yet.

Which now rules out most of the innermost part of the galaxy. The galactic nucleus is a violent, dangerous region with lots of hard radiation. So you're far less likely to find Earth-like worlds there than in our region of the Galaxy.

We would hardly be interested in planets tens of thousand light years away. If Earth isn't alone then there should be terrestial planets much much closer.

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

Every man's fantasy is coming true



Japanese develop 'female' android

By David Whitehouse
Science editor, BBC News website

Japanese scientists have unveiled the most human-looking robot yet
devised - a "female" android called Repliee Q1...

John, this causes me to wonder about the sexualy implications of such a ladybot. Technology will find a way to perfect her squishy parts and let men relieve themselves safely and without the usual hassles of real human women. But we know that they are more desirable inspite of of this, 'cause they're so cute, sort of.

Who could ever say that having sex with a robot is immoral? Could this mark the beginning of the end of AIDS? Just think of all the safe and moral things you could do with a ladybot? After all, life does copy art. To wit: "The Stepford Wives."

--Croak

Originally Posted by HopefulCynic68

> The large majority of stars are spectral-class M 'red dwarf' suns.
> They are much smaller and less masive than the Sun, and cooler,
> emitting less energy. An 'Earth-like (broadly defined)' world
> would have to orbit much closer to a red dwarf than to the Sun to
> stay at a suitable temperature, but orbiting that close would mean
> the planet would likely experience 'tide lock', in which the
> rotation would be slowed down by tidal action until one side of
> the planet always faced the star, and one side always away, making
> a clement environment very iffy.

> (The Moon is tide-locked to Earth, for an example of that same
> effect.)

Adding to Mike's comment, this argument seems particularly
unconvincing.

First, even a reasonable minority of stars would be billions and
billions of stars, to quote Carl Sagan.

As I understand it, you're arguing that there's NO other intelligent
life, so this red dwarf argument is really irrelevant.

Second, even a planet with 'tide lock' could have a region separating
the dark and light sides where day and night occurred, if there were
a "jiggle" in the tide lock. Even if this region were only a few
miles wide, that could be enough of the right environment for life to
evolve. This region might then expand over time, as small life forms
developed cocoons or turtle-like shells to protect themselves from
the environment.

Originally Posted by HopefulCynic68

> So once you have all that, you have a world where life can
> theoretically exist. What does it take to start it? Nobody knows.
> Anybody, scientist or amateur, who applies a probability figure is
> guessing, we don't have a clue about the matter. It may be easy,
> it may be so impossibly hard that it happens one time in a zillion
> reasonable chances.

You make a powerful argument. I guess Descartes was wrong after all,
and we don't really exist.

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
john@GenerationalDynamics.com
http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

Dear Richard,

Originally Posted by Croakmore

> John, this Grand Natural Crapshoot, or Coin Toss, you prefer for
> explaining the origin of life on is not off the list of potential
> causes. But it has almost no appeal for me. It reeks of the
> "Strange Attractor" principle, for which there is no empirical
> evidence. Evolution, I think, is a "bottoms up" affair, not a "top
> down" configuration, with the vital strings held by the Great
> Puppeteer.

> I'm hot for strange attractors, but not so far as biological
> evolution is concerned. There were so many taxonomic bifurcations
> on Earth over the past 3+ billion years that led to humans, for
> example, that you would have to assume they all occurred under the
> infuence of this Strange Attractor. All I'm asking is: How can you
> make this assumption? Flipping coins doesn't do much to convince
> me that intelligent life will naturally pop out from a big-enough
> experiment. Your randomness principle is misplaced; it is better
> to apply it to random genetic drift, where it actually works. But
> it does nothing to explain the origin of life, IMO.

> Without that explanation, we're screwed. I prefer to simply admit
> it, and then work with what we know.

It's pretty clear that you and I have very different world views, but
let me try asking you some very specific questions to help clarify
the issues.

Question 1

We can separate the evolution process into two parts: (1) The
evolution of simple life forms from the primordial soup; and (2) the
evolution of complex life forms from simpler life forms.

Now, I consider both (1) and (2) to have exactly the same issues --
same survival of the fittest issues, same probability issues, etc. --
and that, theoretically, whatever applies to (2) also applies to (1),
the only difference being that (1) precedes (2). Do you agree or
disagree?

Question 2

I consider "survival of the fittest" to be a Strange Attractor that
guides evolution through the chaos of random mutations. Do you agree
or disagree?

Question 3

Suppose you watched someone in front of you flipped a coin 1000
times, and it always came up heads. Suppose that you wanted to
examine the coin, but on the 1001'st flip, it accidentally landed in
the fireplace and melted.

What would your explanation be for the 1000 heads?

(You know my explanation - it must have been an unfair coin.)

Question 4

You seem to be saying that you believe that human life evolved
entirely by accident, as random occurrences with no strange attractor
at all. I find that idea mind-boggling and non-believable. Do you
really believe that?

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
john@GenerationalDynamics.com
http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

Dear Chris,

Originally Posted by spudzill

> Is a Strange Attractor when you see a hot chick with some fat ugly
> guy? I just think it's about money when I see that. Anyhow, most
> of the big Science type guys who think about this stuff say this:
> There are massive galactic civilization out there and some have
> likely visited. Also the current vogue is for a theory called
> panspermia. ( It sounds like a gay porno film to me) That says
> life is everywhere and it's very tenacious. How come these guys
> are ignoring this on their debate? Space.com man, and it's siter
> site Livescience.

Well, I didn't get as far as space.com , but I did reach
panspermia.org , where I found:

Originally Posted by panspermia.org

> Introduction: More Than Panspermia

> Cosmic Ancestry is a new theory pertaining to evolution and the
> origin of life on Earth. It holds that life on Earth was seeded
> from space, and that life's evolution to higher forms depends on
> genetic programs that come from space. (It accepts the Darwinian
> account of evolution that does not require new genetic programs.)
> It is a wholly scientific, testable theory for which evidence is
> accumulating.

> The first point, which deals with the origin of life on Earth, is
> known as panspermia — literally, "seeds everywhere." Its earliest
> recorded advocate was the Greek philosopher Anaxagoras, who
> influenced Socrates. However, Aristotle's theory of spontaneous
> generation came to be preferred by science for more than two
> thousand years. Then on April 9, 1864, French chemist Louis
> Pasteur announced his great experiment disproving spontaneous
> generation as it was then held to occur. In the 1870s, British
> physicist Lord Kelvin and German physicist Hermann von Helmholtz
> reinforced Pasteur and argued that life could come from space. And
> in the first decade of the 1900s, Swedish chemist and Nobel
> laureate Svante Arrhenius theorized that bacterial spores
> propelled through space by light pressure were the seeds of life
> on Earth.

> http://www.panspermia.org/intro.htm

I find this panspermia argument to be completely unsatisfying
because it's simply another version of the "first cause" argument of
cosmology to prove the existence of God. In that argument, you
postulate that everything must have a cause. Thus, the earth had a
cause, the universe had a cause, the big bang had a cause, etc. The
argument concludes that there must be a "first cause" (which violates
the initial postulate), and that first cause must be God. So the
whole argument contradicts itself.

Panspermia says the same thing a different way. It postulates that
life cannot be "generated," and that therefore it must have come from
outer space in the form of seeds. But this violates the initial
postulate, since life had to be "generated" elsewhere to create the
seeds. So the panspermia contradicts itself.

So even if panspermia were true, it wouldn't make any difference.
You still have to figure out how life could be "generated."

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
john@GenerationalDynamics.com
http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

Originally Posted by Croakmore

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

Every man's fantasy is coming true



Japanese develop 'female' android

By David Whitehouse
Science editor, BBC News website

Japanese scientists have unveiled the most human-looking robot yet
devised - a "female" android called Repliee Q1...

John, this causes me to wonder about the sexualy implications of such a ladybot. Technology will find a way to perfect her squishy parts and let men relieve themselves safely and without the usual hassles of real human women. But we know that they are more desirable inspite of of this, 'cause they're so cute, sort of.

Who could ever say that having sex with a robot is immoral? Could this mark the beginning of the end of AIDS? Just think of all the safe and moral things you could do with a ladybot? After all, life does copy art. To wit: "The Stepford Wives."

--Croak

What's next? Boomer or Blondie (aka '#6')? "By your command."

Dear Richard,

Originally Posted by Croakmore

> John, this causes me to wonder about the sexualy implications of
> such a ladybot. Technology will find a way to perfect her squishy
> parts and let men relieve themselves safely and without the usual
> hassles of real human women. But we know that they are more
> desirable inspite of of this, 'cause they're so cute, sort of.

> Who could ever say that having sex with a robot is immoral? Could
> this mark the beginning of the end of AIDS? Just think of all the
> safe and moral things you could do with a ladybot? After all, life
> does copy art. To wit: "The Stepford Wives."

Yeah, they're cute, they don't get bitchy, .... errrrrrrrr ... did I
really type that? Must have been a slip of the finger. No wonder
I'm divorced.

Sincerely,

John

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

Dear Richard,

Originally Posted by Croakmore

> John, this causes me to wonder about the sexualy implications of
> such a ladybot. Technology will find a way to perfect her squishy
> parts and let men relieve themselves safely and without the usual
> hassles of real human women. But we know that they are more
> desirable inspite of of this, 'cause they're so cute, sort of.

> Who could ever say that having sex with a robot is immoral? Could
> this mark the beginning of the end of AIDS? Just think of all the
> safe and moral things you could do with a ladybot? After all, life
> does copy art. To wit: "The Stepford Wives."

Yeah, they're cute, they don't get bitchy, .... errrrrrrrr ... did I
really type that? Must have been a slip of the finger. No wonder
I'm divorced.

Sincerely,

John

Careful, guys! As Peter Gibbons also well knows, Dr. Gaius Baltar thought the exact same thing, and now #6 owns him - he can't even say 'boo' without Blondie's permission! :wink:

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

...Question 1

We can separate the evolution process into two parts: (1) The
evolution of simple life forms from the primordial soup...

John, I will volley a reply to your other questions in due course, but I must first ask you: Where do you get this "primordial soup"? Do you mean that life itself -- the one that so profusely populates the universe -- evolved first right here on Earth?

Just one other questrion: What about an alien infection? We could be the rotten part of a smelly turd left behind by a space traveler with indigestion. Who really knows? I certainly don't.

--Croak

Dear Richard,

Originally Posted by Croakmore

> John, I will volley a reply to your other questions in due course,
> but I must first ask you: Where do you get this "primordial soup"?
> Do you mean that life itself -- the one that so profusely
> populates the universe -- evolved first right here on Earth?

This is not exactly my area of expertise, and so I have to defer to
you to tell me what I mean.

However, here's an interview with Stanley Miller, the guy who
conducted the original 1953 experiments:

http://www.accessexcellence.org/WN/NM/miller.html

I found that to be pretty interesting.

And I'm referring to life here on earth having evolved here on earth.
Life on planets elsewhere in the universe would have evolved
separately on those planets. (Though according to Chapter 7 of my
new book, intelligent life on those other planets would have to
evolved very similarly to earth's intelligent evolution.)

Originally Posted by Croakmore

> Just one other questrion: What about an alien infection? We could
> be the rotten part of a smelly turd left behind by a space
> traveler with indigestion. Who really knows? I certainly don't.

Well, this is the question on panspermia that I answered for spudzill.
It just kicks the can down the road, since an alien infection would
still require an explanation of how the alien evolved.

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
john@GenerationalDynamics.com
http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

• primordial soup...
  ... tastes better than raw sewage.

After having thought about it, of course. Divorce, gay marriage et al, anything goes (ie., no center of gravity, no directional compass, no God) anyone? 8)

Originally Posted by Devil's Advocate

• primordial soup...
  ... tastes better than raw sewage.

After having thought about it, of course. Divorce, gay marriage et al, anything goes (ie., no center of gravity, no directional compass, no God) anyone? 8)

DA is there anything to your life outside of being a right-wing troll?

I mean blue stater makes music. Peter and Kiff read lots of interesting books (not all having to do with electoral politics) and have smart thoughts about them. Eric does his astrology thing. Froggy is clearly very scientific. Arkham has fascinating thoughts about the future. Justin travels to Russia. I enjoy urinating in public. And so on.

But your response to *every* topic is to turn it into some kind of weird partisan referendum. Is there any subject you do not see through the prism of partisan politics? Really. Do you care about nothing else?

Obviously I should have added a laugh track to my post.

John, continuing on with your questions:

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

...
Question 1

We can separate the evolution process into two parts: (1) The
evolution of simple life forms from the primordial soup; and (2) the
evolution of complex life forms from simpler life forms.

Now, I consider both (1) and (2) to have exactly the same issues --
same survival of the fittest issues, same probability issues, etc. --
and that, theoretically, whatever applies to (2) also applies to (1),
the only difference being that (1) precedes (2). Do you agree or
disagree?

It was Darwin himself who started this primordial soup a-boilin', so I can't blame you for that. And you are not alone in your POV on this. To wit: Stuart Kauffman: There are compelling reasons to believe that whenever a collection of chemicals conrtains enough different kinds of molecules, a metaboilism will crystallize from the broth. If this argument is correct, metabolic networks need not be built one component at a time; they can spring full-grown from a primordial soup. Order for free, I call it. If I am right, the motto of life i not We the improbable, but We they expected.

Kauffman is not an evolutionary biologist, and his POV is what I would call "romantic." If it were true we'd be pumping out all sorts of critters in our evolutionary laboratories. I'm still waiting for the first such critter.

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

Question 2

I consider "survival of the fittest" to be a Strange Attractor that
guides evolution through the chaos of random mutations. Do you agree
or disagree?

No, I don't agree. That is a top-down model for a bottom-up process. And evolution is not "the chaos of random mutations." Here are the fundamental causes evolution:

1. Reduction in population size leading to random genetic drift. Here the rarer alleles have a chance to make an evolutionary difference. No selection involved.

2. Gene flow. This means genes jumping across chormosomal boundaries, even from one species to another, causing creative mixing and allelic production that usually is fatal, but not always. "Lateral DNA transfer" is now regarded as a primary mechanism. No selection involved.

3. Mutation. Linear mistakes (i.e., nuclide shuffling) in the replication of germ cells (i.e., gamete production during meiosis) that gets passed on by heredity. Despite popular opinion, this not a very potent means of evolution. No selection involved.

4. Non-random mating. This will disturb the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, possibly leading to an effective redistribution of alleles. And this also is regarded as non-selective (although it does seem selective, prima facia.)

5. Natural selection. This is caused by differential success in reporduction of individuals, where the strongest, cutist, smelliest (you name it) prevail. And this, of course, is selective.

It is best to dispense with the rigid meme of "evolution through the chaos of random mutations."

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

Question 3

Suppose you watched someone in front of you flipped a coin 1000
times, and it always came up heads. Suppose that you wanted to
examine the coin, but on the 1001'st flip, it accidentally landed in
the fireplace and melted.

What would your explanation be for the 1000 heads?

I don't know.

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

Question 4

You seem to be saying that you believe that human life evolved
entirely by accident, as random occurrences with no strange attractor
at all. I find that idea mind-boggling and non-believable. Do you
really believe that?

The honest answer is: I don't know. The best argument I have found is A. G. Cairns-Smith's "genetic take over." That is, at some mysterious point there was a "hijacking" of abiotic chemical processes by some prebiotic genetic configuration that was able to self-replicate. Call it a "strange attractor" if you like, but it is so poorly understood as to be almost useless in a rigorous model.

God just won't go away quietly. He owns the copyright on Biblical memes that are there perhaps to confuse us. I think He or She or It is soon the shed those emporer's frocks. Maybe the Singularity will help with. But at this point, I'm not sure if my analytic crapshoot is any better than yours.

--Croak

Originally Posted by Sabinus Invictus

Careful, guys! As Peter Gibbons also well knows, Dr. Gaius Baltar thought the exact same thing, and now #6 owns him - he can't even say 'boo' without Blondie's permission! :wink:

Say "Boo!", Gaius.

Originally Posted by Croakmore

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

...Question 1

We can separate the evolution process into two parts: (1) The
evolution of simple life forms from the primordial soup...

John, I will volley a reply to your other questions in due course, but I must first ask you: Where do you get this "primordial soup"? Do you mean that life itself -- the one that so profusely populates the universe -- evolved first right here on Earth?

Mr. E, is now the time to bring of Thomas Gold? :wink: Naw, on second thought, don't bother. He didn't even consider Dawkins.

Originally Posted by Milo

DA is there anything to your life outside of being a right-wing troll? . . .

. . . your response to *every* topic is to turn it into some kind of weird partisan referendum. Is there any subject you do not see through the prism of partisan politics? Really. Do you care about nothing else?

He likes his "movies" and apparently the occasional tractor-pull contest. :wink:

Originally Posted by Croakmore

Hey, bro, just curious: Do you have in your library a copy of Gould's "Ontogeny and Phylogeny"? You seem awfully astute on this ORP stuff. If you don't have this book, you should, and I will send you a copy. (You're so on top of Haeckel et al., though, I'm guessing you already have it.)

No sir, I only have the Big Kahuna , The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, and the one thing it taught me more than anything else is that Dawkins is a lot easier to read. :wink:

Originally Posted by Croakmore

Yes, you're right about Haeckel's version of ORP, and Gould take pains to differentiate him from von Baer. It comes down to this: "To decide between Haeckel and von Baer, one key question had to be answered: are adult stages of ancestors repeated by descendents?" (Gould, p. 3).

I agree that Haeckel’s rigid, hard ORP is completely disproven. IIUC, von Baer’s observations still stand, right?

Originally Posted by Croakmore

I have to side with Gould on this business of "heterochrony" -- that immature stages sometimes reproduce, and when they do the results are often quite different.

I agree that heterochrony and neotony are valuable implements in the evolutionary toolbox, if you will.

Originally Posted by Croakmore

Originally Posted by Peter Gibbons

Originally Posted by Croakmore

You can raise the ontogeny-recapitulates-phylogeny principle if you like, but ORP has been brutally debunked (primarily by S. J. Gould).

Mr. E.,

So you completely reject everything the Evo-Devo guys are discovering and talking about? I agree that hard ORP (a la Haeckel) is wrong, but wouldn't you agree that some soft version of ORP is logically necessary? I know we've been here before, but I forget how we ended up.

The hard anti-ORP position (whether you hold it or not) reminds me of the Wolfpoffian school of paleoanthropologists wrongly taking on the geneticists (they'll lose) for honorable reasons (an attempt to celebrate diversity plus a fear of what human nature might actually be like).

While we're wandering off the subject, I'll expand a little on hard and soft ORP. This matter of developmental timing is interesting. And when immature stages engage in reproduction there can be confusion in this timing and in the results. Sometimes there are even larval stages that engage in reproduction, sometimes further confusing what gets passed down the line of inheritance.

Gould on this:

Does it matter whether we are actually repeating an adult stage of a fish-like ancestor (as recapitulationists claimed), or only developing a common embryonic feature that fish, as primitive vertebrates, retain throughout life (as von Baer claimed)? The phyletic information is the same -- we learn the same thing about our evolutionary relationship with fish in either case...I am convinced that the vast majority of supposed recapitulations represent nothing but the conservative nature of heredity. As expressed in von Baer's laws.

I must agree with Gould on hard ORP. He chased it all the way back to the barn, but its shadow is still running around out there in the pasture.

And as for soft ORP, I'm still skeptical. Lamarck is dead; long live Lamarck.

I don’t understand the Lamarck reference because I don’t see how a soft ORP position, the one I hold at least, would necessarily lead to Lamarckism.

Like Gould, I don’t see much of a functional difference between recapitulation (in a soft, very generic form, anyway) and conservation, and furthermore don’t see much of an abstract difference either.

My belief in soft ORP is tied to Wilber’s (really Koestler’s) Holonism and Holarchy. In short, it is the ontological position that everything is a “holon” or a simultaneous whole/part: Made of parts, a whole unto itself, and a part of something else. This idea goes on to contend that the “basic structures” (though likely not the "surface structures") of each holon remain even after being subsumed into a larger holon, whether in a highly organized fashion or not (highly organized: a water molecule or a human body; less organized: a pile of rocks, a simple aggregation of hydrogen, or Marc Lamb’s thinking).

Fascinating discussion and all, but I'm a lot less interested in abstract discussions on what might have been or could have been, and more interested in what's about to happen.

Found this interesting tidbit at the end of a newsletter that lands weekly in my inbox:

Originally Posted by John Mauldin

I am reading a new book by Ray Kurzweil this trip. He was kind enough to send me a pre-pub copy. I will review it in September when it comes out. Entitled "The Singularity is Near," it describes the coming rapid pace of technological change and how it will affect society. IBM will have a computer in two years which can process as much as 1/10 the human brain, and sometime next decade will have one which has the power of a human brain. Kurzweil (whose credentials as an inventor have few equals) suggests we will see such a computer on our desks (less than $1,000) within 20-25 years. He discusses other changes in bio- and nano-tech.

I guess it's time for me to head back over to kurzweilai.net and see what he's up to.