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Punctuated Equalibria
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Carol Hugunin, a biologist on the staff of 21'st Century Science
recently wrote an article titled: It's Time to Bury Darwin And Get On
With Real Science Noting:
"For more than a century, Darwin has dominated the biological
sciences, but his hypothesis for the evolution of life does
not cohere with natural history and leads to a philosophical
morass."

She notes the problems involved not only with inbreeding (the basis of
punc/eek), but also with the notion of having life forms arise by
adapting to specialized or localized conditions:

"Darwin developed much of his hypothesis by studying the
way British horse and dog breeders produced separate breeds.
Indeed, genetic variation allows breeders to select for specific
traits: the fastest, the largest, the most brightly colored, and so
on. From this he extrapolated the idea of "natural" selection as
a selection for the individuals best adapted to conditions in the
wild. However, horse and dog breeding produce variation on-
ly within a single species.

"In addition to' this limitation, the show-animal breeding
method has its proolems. Inbreeding mother to son, sibling to
sibling, does indeed often produce progeny very similar to the
proven champion parents, but the price paid for this shortcut
to riches is a rapid increase in very serious genetic diseases,
poor temperament, and other problems.

"Farm animals and other working animals, as well as agricul-
tural plants, are outbred to maintain both physical and-for
the animals-psychological versatility and vigor. They are gen-
erally bred for vigor, endurance, and versatility (plasticity) un-
der a wide variety of circumstances. For example, new strains
of seed are judged agriculturally by whether they produce well
under a wide variety of climate and soil conditions, including
how well they can withstand diseases common to that crop.
Hybrid vigor, the wellspring of modern agriculture, is pro-
duced totally by outbreeding.

"What does this question of outbreeding or inbreeding have
to do with evolution?

"There is a basic flaw in the assumption that one can breed
for just a few very specific traits to get a species perfectly
adapted to very fixed and limited conditions, and that this is
the way evolution generates speciation: This view assumes that
the environment-nature remains fixed and stable. However,
living conditions are not fixed. External bounding conditions
change. Continents and oceans have come and gone. Climatic
conditions have fluctuated from extremely hot, steamy tropical
conditions or hot arid conditions to glacial ice ages. Numerous
species have emerged and died out. Perfect adaptation to fixed
environmental conditions is not the way evolution proceeds.
Although this strategy may work on the race track or in the
show ring, the species that used this strategy are long since ex-
tinct. Instead, successful species must have a certain flexibility
and vigor that makes them adaptable to changing environmen-
tal conditions.

"It took life eons to generate species that are progressively
more and more adaptable to different and varying condi-
tions. Life becomes increasingly homeostatic (able to regu-
late its own physiological conditions internally) as higher
forms of life evolve. First, life escapes from dependence on
an aqueous environment and becomes able to regulate its
own salt and water content, protecting itself, by various
means, from desiccation and other extremes. With mammals
and birds, homeotherms evolve: species able to regulate
their own body temperature.

"Finally, man appears. From the physiological standpoint,
man appears in Darwinian terms to be the least well adjusted
to environmental conditions, being both weak and naked. Yet,
from the standpoint of adaptation to changing environmental
conditions, he is the best adapted, because he has creative rea-
son and develops language and society. Man is thus free from
the fixed instinctual drives of lower animals. During a pro-
longed child-rearing phase, the young develop the mental apti-
tude to generate new technologies that can conquer any envi-
ronment-and even colonize space.

"The Earth and its biosphere are the antithesis of a fixed envi-
ronment. Looked at from the perspective of geological tim~
the eons during which life has evolved-life is constantly
changing with the biospheric environment; it is constantly
modifying and trnnsfom~ing for its own ends. From this stand-
point, the number of species that have become extinct as a re-
sult of changes wrought by human civilization is paltry in
comparison with the number of species extinctions caused by
major climatic and similar drastic environmental changes that
occurred prior to man's appearance.
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A friend of mine has been reading one of Niles Eldredge's books and
tells me that you come away from it with a number of funny
impressions. Basically, Eldredge destroys Darwinian gradualism
altogether, demonstrating very adequately that it is simply
contradicted by all of the facts of the fossil record, and then
attempts to replace it with a completely unworkable theory in
punctuated equalibria.

Punctuated equalibria, or punc/eek, amounts to a claim that the fossil
record shows no intermediate forms because all meaningful change
(macroevolutionary change) occurs in small groups of animals living in
peripheral areas, and that these animals, having developed some
advantage via this process, then go on to take over the larger areas
from the main herds of creatures.

I have noted two problems with this: one, that inbreeding is being
proposed as the means of obtaining happiness and success (see above),
and two is the idea that these smaller groups of animals win out in
all cases because of some genetic advantage, which is like needing to
have Custer win at the Little big Horn every day for thousands and
millions of years.

Superior numbers will win out over some slight genetic advantage in
all cases. In the struggle for dominance and possession of territory,
the larger lion pride, or the larger hyena pack wins.

And my friend points out one other little concern which hadn't even
occurred to me previously but which certainly makes good sense and
coincides with what Ms. Hugunin has to say about adaptability vs.
adaptation for specialized conditions.

Each one of the little groups which Gould and Eldredge postulate is
going to arise in some localized area and be adapted to that area.
Gould and Eldredge then require these parochials to go out and in all
cases overcome much larger herds of animals which are adapted to
varying conditions over large areas.

In real life, on islands and in other isolated areas, the first minute
ordinary dogs, cats, rats and what not are introduced into such an
isolated environment, the specialized animals all get wiped out in a
short period of time.

At some point, evolutions will have to face the facts; there is no
version of this business which works.
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