The Third Way of Evolution announced, but fails to cohere

Jerry is spot-on in everything he says there. The one thing I would add is the possibility that this "third way" concept and propaganda and website is primarily being run by the engineer Raju Pookottil, and the professors who are listed are mostly basically whomever Pookottil could get to sign on after a nice fawning email from Pookottil professing to be their biggest fan. Some of the professors may be fairly aware of what is being said on their behalf, e.g. Shapiro is always up for some revolutionary-sounding-but-actually-vague-and-facile-question-begging talk about adaptive responses, but I bet a bunch of them just said "sure, this is interesting" in response to an email and since then have not paid attention. They should know better, of course, but it's pretty easy to get suckered by someone who praises your work and offers to promote you for free...

Pandas sat down, designed a new thumb, and then tried really, really hard to grow one? Whoa.

After counting repeatedly, I have settled on 43 as the number of people listed at The Third Way of Evolution.

John, I think that you are referring to Lamarckian views. You are describing Lamarck's actual mechanism (the "trying ... to grow one" part anyway). Modern "Lamarckians" don't use that. They consider epigenetic modifications an example of inheritance of acquired characters, but they do not invoke use-and-disuse, or organisms trying to alter their parts. Those important parts of Lamarck's theory have not been revived. Because they would sound silly.

So there is a good case to make that the modern Lamarckians aren't really Lamarckian. They are misguided for another reason: epigenetic modifications don't hang around more than a few generations, unless stabilized by subsequent genetic change. Or unless kept present by continuing, and rather massive, natural selection. Jablonka and a colleague have written a paper modeling that, as Monty Slatkin also did a bit earlier. Both papers show that maintaining an epigenetic modification without stabilizing it by Mendelian changes is extremely expensive. For some reason that doesn't seem to have kept Jablonka from signing on to The Third Way.

Joe:

I'm afraid it's worse than you imagined. From Pookottil's profile:

"Evolution, he believes, is more of a Lamarckian process. In his book, Pookottil proposes a mechanism that could potentially explain how the whole thing might be working. Organisms do not need to depend on accidental mutations and selection. They have built in capabilities that allow them to interact with the environment and devise clever solutions. If a panda is in the process of generating a new thumb, it has worked out exactly where it needs one and how to build it. The emerging field of epigenetics is spearheading a comeback for Lamarckian evolution."

I have been commenting on the never-ending stream of bogus five-star reviews of Meyer's Darwin's Doubt on Amazon since it came out. One of the creationist commenters recently invoked the Third Way website, claiming it supported intelligent design. So I wrote to Pookottil and let him know. His response was to add the very last paragraph on the home page, starting "It has come to our attention..."

Maybe we should just call it "The 43 ways of evolution."

Glen Davidson

John Harshman said: Joe: I'm afraid it's worse than you imagined. From Pookottil's profile: "Evolution, he believes, is more of a Lamarckian process. In his book, Pookottil proposes a mechanism that could potentially explain how the whole thing might be working. Organisms do not need to depend on accidental mutations and selection. They have built in capabilities that allow them to interact with the environment and devise clever solutions. If a panda is in the process of generating a new thumb, it has worked out exactly where it needs one and how to build it. The emerging field of epigenetics is spearheading a comeback for Lamarckian evolution."

If evolution is a "choice", then so is Down Syndrome.

If evolution is a choice, why didn't you choose better?

I was struck by an argument that Darwin proposed against Larmarckian evolution, but I don't recall anyone else drawing attention to it.

That is how sterile castes in social insects cannot pass on their acquired characteristics.

I recognized one of the names on that list of scientists; Adrian Bejan, of "Constructor Theory." I doubt he will be making much of a contribution.

If this is the kind of thinking that is attracted to this "project," one has to wonder what other types of woo-woo will be invoked in this "Third Way of Evolution."

My own assessment of the state of biological evolution is that it is basically on track. My guess is that the areas that need the most research will be in molecular evolution. This is an area that will involve much more physics and chemistry as well as work done on the modeling of complex molecular systems on the really advanced super computers that are now becoming available.

This kind of research will take into consideration not only the basic physics and chemistry of atomic and molecular interactions, but will also be used in discovering higher level rules of interaction and linking these to the physics and chemistry. The energy ranges in which these processes occur will be extremely narrow (within a few hundredths to a few thousandths of an eV); and understanding this will be crucial. Such energy resolution will require computational capacities and speeds that are pushing beyond the limits of current super computers.

I should also point out that this kind of research will not be anything like Np < 1 with p being calculated as the probability of a specified string of letters.

Mike Elzinga said: I recognized one of the names on that list of scientists; Adrian Bejan, of "Constructor Theory." I doubt he will be making much of a contribution. If this is the kind of thinking that is attracted to this "project," one has to wonder what other types of woo-woo will be invoked in this "Third Way of Evolution." ...

I should also mention a point that François Jacob made about Lamarckian theories. He pointed out that the problem is that when a protein does not function well, there is no path back from that activity to the genome, to alter the gene to correct its sequence to one which will produce a well-functioning protein.

The most people have come up with are mechanisms that increase the overall mutation rate when the organism is suffering a loss of fitness. But among those mutations, there is no predisposition to mutate preferentially in the desired direction. Our impulse to want there to be an "instruction" mechanism that corrects the genome is, sadly, wrong.

"The two laws of thermodynamics do not account for nature completely. Nature is not made of black boxes. Nature’s boxes are filled with evolving, freely morphing configurations—even the fact that they have names (rivers, blood vessels) is due to their appearance, organization, or design. Where the second law commands that things should flow from high to low, the constructal law commands that they evolve in configurations that flow more and more easily over time."

Joe Felsenstein said: I should also mention a point that François Jacob made about Lamarckian theories. He pointed out that the problem is that when a protein does not function well, there is no path back from that activity to the genome, to alter the gene to correct its sequence to one which will produce a well-functioning protein. The most people have come up with are mechanisms that increase the overall mutation rate when the organism is suffering a loss of fitness. But among those mutations, there is no predisposition to mutate preferentially in the desired direction. Our impulse to want there to be an "instruction" mechanism that corrects the genome is, sadly, wrong.

harold said: ... It's worth noting that the quotes above, attributed to "third way" advocates, are worse than "standard Lamarckism". Standard Lamarckism, whether actually articulated by Lamarck or not, is generally understood to be the idea that acquired traits are inherited, but usually expressed in neutral rather than mystical terms. For example, suppose that a pale young couple living in Sweden move to Australia and become sun-tanned. Then they begin having children. Under standard Lamarckism, their children should be more likely to have alleles for darker skin tone, than if the couple had not become sun-tanned before having children. This is incorrect. It can be shown to be incorrect, either empirically, or to a fairly decent degree merely by making reference to what we know about how DNA replicates. However, before genetics was understood, it was an appealing idea. ...

Joe Felsenstein said: He gave the response about the path from the phenotype back to the genotype not existing, because the path from the genotype to the phenotype is too long and complex. That answer struck me at the time as a neat summary that cleared up a lot of mental fog.

... which leads to an interesting question.

I think that the two explanations are not in conflict. But how to connect them?

The changes in genes start out with differences in the two copies of the gene that occur in a fertilized egg. Then a lot of energy gets burned up turning that into an adult, who has hundreds to billions of cells, each a more-or-less accurate copy of the original cell's genotype.

A lot energy also gets used making different phenotypes from the genotypes.

If we had a repair system that looked at the phenotype and went and changed the genes, it could have differences in the phenotypes make a small difference in the repair system, a difference that then got amplified into putting an A where a G had been before. More energy would be burned up doing that.

It could happen, but doesn't in practice. One major reason is that there are multiple steps from the gene to the phenotype, and evolving a reverse-order system of repair would be difficult. That is because it would have no useful effect until all the steps were in place. (In effect I am making a Michael-Behe-style "edge of evolution" argument).

Mike, am I mistaken here?

Joe Felsenstein said: ... which leads to an interesting question. I think that the two explanations are not in conflict. But how to connect them? The changes in genes start out with differences in the two copies of the gene that occur in a fertilized egg. Then a lot of energy gets burned up turning that into an adult, who has hundreds to billions of cells, each a more-or-less accurate copy of the original cell's genotype. A lot energy also gets used making different phenotypes from the genotypes.

If we had a repair system that looked at the phenotype and went and changed the genes, it could have differences in the phenotypes make a small difference in the repair system, a difference that then got amplified into putting an A where a G had been before. More energy would be burned up doing that.

Reminds me of the Prodigal Son scene from Blade Runner.

But enzymes do rearrange nucleotide bonds every day in your body: proofreading and repair, not to mention the process of replication itself. This doesn't seem energetically very different from the hypothetical process of directed mutation. What am I missing?

Joe Felsenstein said: I should also mention a point that François Jacob made about Lamarckian theories. He pointed out that the problem is that when a protein does not function well, there is no path back from that activity to the genome, to alter the gene to correct its sequence to one which will produce a well-functioning protein.

Joe Felsenstein said: Furthermore having your skin react to the environment by tanning, or your muscles react to heavy use by increasing in size, are responses that have resulted from natural selection. They are not a general property that applies to other organs.

callahanpb said: I never gave it any thought before, but if your body is already able to acclimate to the environment rapidly in a certain way, then passing on the ability to acclimate is more useful than passing on the change, because the environment won't necessarily stay fixed.

John Harshman said: But enzymes do rearrange nucleotide bonds every day in your body: proofreading and repair, not to mention the process of replication itself. This doesn't seem energetically very different from the hypothetical process of directed mutation. What am I missing?

By the way; a microorganism with a nervous system and a brain would be an oxymoron. Functioning nervous systems and brains are considerably more complex and much larger than a microorganism.

John Harshman said: But enzymes do rearrange nucleotide bonds every day in your body: proofreading and repair, not to mention the process of replication itself. This doesn't seem energetically very different from the hypothetical process of directed mutation. What am I missing?

DS said:

John Harshman said: But enzymes do rearrange nucleotide bonds every day in your body: proofreading and repair, not to mention the process of replication itself. This doesn't seem energetically very different from the hypothetical process of directed mutation. What am I missing?

The difference is intelligence.

Mike Elzinga said:

DS said:

John Harshman said: But enzymes do rearrange nucleotide bonds every day in your body: proofreading and repair, not to mention the process of replication itself. This doesn't seem energetically very different from the hypothetical process of directed mutation. What am I missing?

The difference is intelligence.

And that, in turn, would require a complex network of sensory inputs from every cell and organ in the organism in order to collect the data needed for making decisions. But then, on what data does such intelligence predict the future? ID/creationists postulate an "external" intelligence that does the gene manipulating for an anticipated future. So, where is the complex network of input for such an intelligent agency; and how does such and intelligent agency manipulate the genes? Maybe it waves flags at them. I think I can see the attraction that this project might have for ID/creationists. But, if an ID/creationist likes it, it must be wrong.

DS said:

John Harshman said: But enzymes do rearrange nucleotide bonds every day in your body: proofreading and repair, not to mention the process of replication itself. This doesn't seem energetically very different from the hypothetical process of directed mutation. What am I missing?

The difference is intelligence. Molecules can follow simple rules such as "copy this sequence exactly" or "if you make a mistake go back and fix it". For example, molecules diffuse down a concentration gradient with no conscious awareness. But it takes foresight and planning to anticipate how the environment might change in the future and produce nucleotide substitutions that will cause changes in phenotype that anticipate those changes and are adaptive. It also takes intelligence to detect physiological changes and convert them into changes that can be passed down to future generations. No mechanism for such processes has ever been discovered. It's all just another form of animism, or anthropomorphizing inanimate processes. People just can't seem to get their minds around the role of randomness in biological processes. I once had a conversation with Greg Bear, author of "Darwin's Radio", in which he proposes some sort of saltatory human evolution based on such a mechanism. I could not seem to convince him that random mutations were responsible for producing genetic variation. He seemed to understand basic biology quite well and I was really impressed with he amount of research he had done. But I still don't think that I convinced him that his scenario was biologically implausible.

harold said: In the case of Lamarckism I don't think the magic is in energy levels of the individual reactions. Mutations are chemical reactions that are kinetically similar to other biochemical reactions.

callahanpb said: The first problem that comes to mind is that it is unnecessary to pass changes in genes explicitly when you can just produce variability and let the environment sort out which variations are beneficial (i.e. natural selection). Why would anyone imagine an elaborate mechanism to exist when nature gets along fine without it?

For no amount of exercise, or habit, or volition, in the utterly sterile members of a community could possibly have affected the structure or instincts of the fertile members, which alone leave descendants. I am surprised that no one has advanced this demonstrative case of neuter insects, against the well-known doctrine of Lamarck.

TomS said:

For no amount of exercise, or habit, or volition, in the utterly sterile members of a community could possibly have affected the structure or instincts of the fertile members, which alone leave descendants. I am surprised that no one has advanced this demonstrative case of neuter insects, against the well-known doctrine of Lamarck.

On the Origin of Species, page 215 near the end of chapter VII

DS said: I have always thought that the reason why people don't want to accept this as an explanation is all of the differential mortality that it involves, they just don't seem to want to think about that. The second reason is that they apparently don't like to think of themselves as the product of "random" processes. The third reason might be that they just know that they are special and that someone must be watching out for them and has a special plan in mind.

callahanpb said:

harold said: In the case of Lamarckism I don't think the magic is in energy levels of the individual reactions. Mutations are chemical reactions that are kinetically similar to other biochemical reactions.

I think if you had to list every objection to Lamarckism, you'd wind up with a pile of dead fish and bullet-ridden barrel staves (or maybe a flattened sheet of equine jerky depending on your favorite cliche). The argument from energy levels may make sense, but it isn't the first problem that comes to mind. In fact, I don't think this would even make my short list (but I'm not a biologist, chemist, or physicist, so maybe it's just how I think).

Mike Elzinga said: I was simply pointing out that the energy levels of the chemistry and physics are enough to preclude Lamarckian mechanisms for "acquired characteristics."

Well all you have to do is tell me which nucleotides to change in order make your neck longer and how you are gong to change them and you might be on to something. If you can't do it consciously, why would you think you could do it unconsciously? And why would you think a mouse could do it at all?

It took humans hundreds of years just to figure out the basics of how genetics works. And we still don't understand the genetic basis of most traits. I guess we should have just asked a giraffe in the first place. They are obviously masters of this stuff. I'm sure they would have helped us understand it if we had just asked politely.

callahanpb said:

Mike Elzinga said: I was simply pointing out that the energy levels of the chemistry and physics are enough to preclude Lamarckian mechanisms for "acquired characteristics."

Human genetic engineering could work out like this. We observe what we think are desirable traits acquired through hard work and exercise, and then somehow figure out how to modify our genome to get them more easily. But even if we knew what we wanted (and we certainly don't know what is "good for us" in an objective sense) that is a far cry from knowing how to get these things back into our genome. The idea is just kind of ridiculous. I admit (and this is probably my bias as a computer scientist) that my "favorite" argument against Lamarckism is that going from genotype to phenotype looks like a one-way function to me. You can guess at bits and pieces, but there will never be a complete, systematic way to infer a gene from a characteristic.

It took humans hundreds of years just to figure out the basics of how genetics works. And we still don’t understand the genetic basis of most traits. I guess we should have just asked a giraffe in the first place. They are obviously masters of this stuff. I’m sure they would have helped us understand it if we had just asked politely.

Henry J said:

It took humans hundreds of years just to figure out the basics of how genetics works. And we still don’t understand the genetic basis of most traits. I guess we should have just asked a giraffe in the first place. They are obviously masters of this stuff. I’m sure they would have helped us understand it if we had just asked politely.

Maybe if we offer the giraffe a handful of those crackers that they like...

Well, as I recall while visiting a zoo, it was more like a balcony, quite a height above the floor the giraffes were walking on.

Henry J said: Well, as I recall while visiting a zoo, it was more like a balcony, quite a height above the floor the giraffes were walking on.

Henry J said: Well, as I recall while visiting a zoo, it was more like a balcony, quite a height above the floor the giraffes were walking on.

Maybe the giraffe is the intelligent designer.

I have always thought that the reason why people don’t want to accept this as an explanation is all of the differential mortality that it involves, they just don’t seem to want to think about that.

The second reason is that they apparently don’t like to think of themselves as the product of “random” processes.

The third reason might be that they just know that they are special and that someone must be watching out for them and has a special plan in mind.

harold said:

The second reason is that they apparently don’t like to think of themselves as the product of “random” processes.

I'm not sure that most people can grasp the concept of "random".

harold said:

The second reason is that they apparently don’t like to think of themselves as the product of “random” processes.

I'm not sure that most people can grasp the concept of "random".

In other words, people want things to be directed. And some people want this so badly that they will deny how reality actually works before they accept that things aren't.

I've never really understood the big deal about this. Life isn't fair, but people can be. Nature isn't directed, but people can direct themselves.

Maybe that's the point: most people don't want to direct themselves. They would prefer to be directed, by someone or something else. Easier to be passive than active. Easier to avoid responsibility for yourself than to take it. Easier to obey orders than to set yourself a goal and go for it.

So infantile.

DS said:

callahanpb said: The first problem that comes to mind is that it is unnecessary to pass changes in genes explicitly when you can just produce variability and let the environment sort out which variations are beneficial (i.e. natural selection). Why would anyone imagine an elaborate mechanism to exist when nature gets along fine without it?

I have always thought that the reason why people don't want to accept this as an explanation is all of the differential mortality that it involves, they just don't seem to want to think about that. The second reason is that they apparently don't like to think of themselves as the product of "random" processes. The third reason might be that they just know that they are special and that someone must be watching out for them and has a special plan in mind.

mattdance18 said: In other words, people want things to be directed. And some people want this so badly that they will deny how reality actually works before they accept that things aren't. I've never really understood the big deal about this. Life isn't fair, but people can be. Nature isn't directed, but people can direct themselves. Maybe that's the point: most people don't want to direct themselves. They would prefer to be directed, by someone or something else. Easier to be passive than active. Easier to avoid responsibility for yourself than to take it. Easier to obey orders than to set yourself a goal and go for it. So infantile.

harold's comment applies to some opponents of evolution. But there is also considerable resistance to explaining adaptation by natural selection, even among people who agree that evolution has occurred and that common descent is real.

When François Jacob spoke at our university in 1982, on evolution as "tinkering", a woman asked in the question period whether it was not possible that Lamarckian mechanisms were responsible. Jacob answered that the chain of events from gene to protein was too long and there was no way of going back from phenotype to genotype, so no.

I don't think that the questioner was unhappy with common descent, that she was coming from a creationist position. She represented a lot of people who are closer to New Age mysticism than to Fox News, and who are unhappy with natural selection and prefer to have a Lamarckian mechanism.

Outright support for Lamarckism should be rare among Biblical literalists, as Lamarck was providing a mechanism for evolution. But people who want there to be a harmonious universe where all things automatically work out for the best may be much happier with Lamarck than with Darwin.

On another matter, this thread was originally about the Third Way of Evolution. We've been having an interesting discussion of acceptance of Lamarckism, but that is only one of the views represented on the Third Way website.

Anyone want to look at more of the 42 people listed there, and tell us what their views are, and what you think about those views?

Joe, do you think any particular one of them is worth discussing? I don't really want to read 42 manifestos.

How about if we start here. From the introduction on the web page cited:

Neo-Darwinism, which is clearly naturalistic science but ignores much contemporary molecular evidence and invokes a set of unsupported assumptions about the accidental nature of hereditary variation. Neo-Darwinism ignores important rapid evolutionary processes such as symbiogenesis, horizontal DNA transfer, action of mobile DNA and epigenetic modifications. Moreover, some Neo-Darwinists have elevated Natural Selection into a unique creative force that solves all the difficult evolutionary problems without a real empirical basis.

Really? Is even a single one of these statements true? Discuss amongst yourselves.

Different commenters could simply pick one of the 42 and see what they say. A random-sample approach.

Well, I picked one: Pookottil's, who seems to be the driving force behind the whole thing. He's a Lamarckian. Not a neo-Lamarckian; no use and disuse here. He goes for a principle of internal striving. But he seems to like all the vaguely stated alternatives to "Darwinism" too. It isn't clear what he thinks symbiogenesis, horizontal transfer, mobile elements, or epigenetics are supposed to accomplish, or how, but don't they sound cool?

1) " ... ignores much contemporary molecular evidence ..."

Really" And what evidence would that be? Who exactly is ignoring it? Why are they ignoring it?

2) " ... invokes a set of unsupported assumptions about the accidental nature of hereditary variation."

Really? So no experiments were ever done in order to test the hypothesis that mutations arise randomly? Really? Now who is ignoring evidence?

3) "Neo-Darwinism ignores important rapid evolutionary processes such as symbiogenesis, horizontal DNA transfer, action of mobile DNA and epigenetic modifications."

Really? I think that evolutionary biologists are the ones who discovered most of those things. Why on earth would anyone ignore any of these things? I know of many evolutionary biologists who study mobile genetic elements and their role in evolution. There are literally thousands of papers written about it in evolutionary biology. Is that what they mean by "ignore"?

4) " ... elevated Natural Selection into a unique creative force that solves all the difficult evolutionary problems without a real empirical basis."

Really? So there are no experiments done on natural selection either? And exactly who is claiming that it is a "creative force"? In what sense is the word "creative" being used? Natural selection certainly isn't "creative" in any meaningful sense that I know of, nor has anyone ever tried to tell me that it is.

This sounds like a lot of sour grapes by some crackpots who can't get anyone to listen to their weird ideas. They may even have some good ideas, but if they are so far sown the rabbit hole that they have to misrepresent real scientists in order to get anyone to listen to them, they might have bigger problems than following the evidence. Maybe they should do what creationists do, publish their own journal where they can say anything they want without fear of censorship.

The people referred to on the website are a very mixed bag. The promoter may be a garden-variety Lamarckist, but I don't think Odling-Smee or Andreas Wagner are cranks and Lynn Margolis didn't start out as a crank.

If you spend a heck of a lot of time arguing with Creationists, you get used to retailing a rather potted version of evolutionary theory because it's rhetorically convenient and also because your opponents will seize on any new ideas as evidence of the falsity of evolution in general even though our understanding of how organisms evolve is actually getting further and further away from theological commonsense all the time. Maybe there should be a site called "Third Ways in Evolution."

I didn't see and Andreas Wagner - whose book The Arrival of the Fittest I have read recently; and who certainly doesn't seem to be a crank - on that list; but I did see an Andreas Werner.

But, looking through the profiles, I find it hard to assess what many of them have in common. As Joe's title to this thread suggests, there doesn't seem to be much chance of a coherent vision coming out of this group; the members of which, by the way, are by invitation. It appears that somebody organizing this project is trying to acquire names or leave the impression that something significant is going on - or will be going on in some unspecified future.

Mike Elzinga said: I didn't see and Andreas Wagner - whose book The Arrival of the Fittest I have read recently; and who certainly doesn't seem to be a crank - on that list; but I did see an Andreas Werner. But, looking through the profiles, I find it hard to assess what many of them have in common. As Joe's title to this thread suggests, there doesn't seem to be much chance of a coherent vision coming out of this group; the members of which, by the way, are by invitation. It appears that somebody organizing this project is trying to acquire names or leave the impression that something significant is going on - or will be going on in some unspecified future.

Lynn Margolis championed the endosymbiosis theory for the origin of mitochondria. The theory is backed by lots of evidence and is accepted by the vast majority of the scientific community. One can hardly say that she was not taken seriously or that she was ignored. It is true that it was a long hard struggle to have the theory accepted, but what finally won the day was the evidence. I don't know what kind of woo she is pitching now, but she at least knows what it takes to convince the scientific community to take notice.

It is true that science is done by humans, each with their own biases and prejudices. And it is true that there is a conservative nature to science, with change coming only very slowly. But it is not true that change does not occur. It is not true that self serving and intellectual nepotism always suppress innovation. Unfortunately, it is true that it is often difficult to get funding, even if you have a really great hypothesis that cries out for testing. Maybe instead of getting their own journal, these guys should give out grants to themselves. Then they could show everybody. Remember, everybody thought Craig Venter was a crackpot too.

harold said: What seems to have happened is that a non-political wealthy crackpot with an engineering degree has set up a ridiculous evolution denial web site.

Lynn Margulis died in 2011. Her overall contribution to science was obviously a major positive one.

In later life she was known for over-emphasizing (according to mainstream consensus) the role of symbiosis and cooperation in evolution. Well, that bias is understandable, given that she was the major proponent of endosymbiosis theory. It's all evolution - whether you say alleles increase in frequency because they lovingly cooperated with symbiotic partners, or you say that they increased in frequency because they outcompeted lesser alleles by finding a symbiotic partner, that's just foisting human values onto a process that is as fundamental and neutral as the movement of photons through space. Phenotypes interact with the environment, they have variable reproductive rates within a given environment, and there is a statistical tendency for the alleles associated with the phenotypes that reproduced more to increase in frequency. Phenotypes reproduce imperfectly and mutations constantly generate new alleles. That's all there is to it. It isn't "evil", it isn't "good", it's just what happens.

She did get involved in some major crackpot science denial, though, most notably HIV/AIDS denial http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynn_Margulis#AIDS.2FHIV_theory. As far as I know this was for unique and bizarre reasons, not as a right wing political gesture. (Ninety-nine point nine nine nine percent of HIV denial is political in nature but Margulis may have been the exception.)
It's unfortunate, but the nature of science is, a great idea makes a big difference, and a crazy idea will be forgotten.

Joe Felsenstein said:

harold said:

The second reason is that they apparently don’t like to think of themselves as the product of “random” processes.

I'm not sure that most people can grasp the concept of "random".

People have a strong attraction to an "instruction" model in which nature tells us what we need to do to adapt. Compared to that random blunderings followed by killing a lot of them off seems messy and cruel.

Mike Elzinga said: I didn't see and Andreas Wagner - whose book The Arrival of the Fittest I have read recently; and who certainly doesn't seem to be a crank - on that list; but I did see an Andreas Werner.

harold said: Lynn Margulis died in 2011. Her overall contribution to science was obviously a major positive one. In later life she was known for over-emphasizing (according to mainstream consensus) the role of symbiosis and cooperation in evolution. Well, that bias is understandable, given that she was the major proponent of endosymbiosis theory. It's all evolution - whether you say alleles increase in frequency because they lovingly cooperated with symbiotic partners, or you say that they increased in frequency because they outcompeted lesser alleles by finding a symbiotic partner, that's just foisting human values onto a process that is as fundamental and neutral as the movement of photons through space. Phenotypes interact with the environment, they have variable reproductive rates within a given environment, and there is a statistical tendency for the alleles associated with the phenotypes that reproduced more to increase in frequency. Phenotypes reproduce imperfectly and mutations constantly generate new alleles. That's all there is to it. It isn't "evil", it isn't "good", it's just what happens. She did get involved in some major crackpot science denial, though, most notably HIV/AIDS denial http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynn_Margulis#AIDS.2FHIV_theory. As far as I know this was for unique and bizarre reasons, not as a right wing political gesture. (Ninety-nine point nine nine nine percent of HIV denial is political in nature but Margulis may have been the exception.) It's unfortunate, but the nature of science is, a great idea makes a big difference, and a crazy idea will be forgotten.

The list of dissenters, those who allowed their names to be used on the web site, is not the same as the list of people who wrote books on the web site's reading list. Though there is certainly considerable overlap. Still, Sean Carroll is on the latter list. Don't make too much of it. This is presumably why Joe focused on the 43.

John Harshman said: The list of dissenters, those who allowed their names to be used on the web site, is not the same as the list of people who wrote books on the web site's reading list. Though there is certainly considerable overlap. Still, Sean Carroll is on the latter list. Don't make too much of it. This is presumably why Joe focused on the 43.

Does he give a list of what conclusions of the modern synthesis are specifically contradicted by conclusions from evo-devo?

Sean Carroll does not argue that Evo-Devo invalidates the Modern Synthesis. Sorry if it sounded as if I was saying that. My sentences were too convoluted in my comment above.

Carroll's book is the most accessible account of Evo-Devo, so it is listed at the Third Way site. But it is others there who argue that Evo-Devo invalidates the Modern Synthesis. Carroll has not agreed to be one of the people listed there.

Well if they have the book listed on their site, one might conclude that at least there is something in the book that they think is problematic for modern evolutionary theory. Now what could that be? Or are they just trying to claim that any new discoveries invalidate all older ideas? Either way they have eviscerated their own argument, since Evo-devo is a well established part of mainstream evolutionary theory. It was not ignored and it definitely does not contradict anything Darwin ever claimed.

So I guess that neither symbiosis or evo-devo fit with their bass ackwards "conspiracy" theory. What else have they got? Has comparative genomics been ignored as well?

Joe Felsenstein said: Sean Carroll does not argue that Evo-Devo invalidates the Modern Synthesis. Sorry if it sounded as if I was saying that. My sentences were too convoluted in my comment above. Carroll's book is the most accessible account of Evo-Devo, so it is listed at the Third Way site. But it is others there who argue that Evo-Devo invalidates the Modern Synthesis. Carroll has not agreed to be one of the people listed there.

DS said: [A]re they just trying to claim that any new discoveries invalidate all older ideas?

harold said: Lynn Margulis died in 2011. Her overall contribution to science was obviously a major positive one.

mattdance18 said:

harold said: Lynn Margulis died in 2011. Her overall contribution to science was obviously a major positive one.

Indeed. Her endosymbiosis hypothesis for the origin of mitochondria was really, really important. She just went a bit too far with it. For example, she was a big proponent of James Lovelock's pseudo-scientific "Gaia Hypothesis." None of this invalidates her real contributions. But if these are the sorts of things that this website clings to, they don't really have much, do they?

Aside from mitochondria and chloroplasts (which are very important cases) there is little evidence that other cell organelles are the result of symbiosis. Lynn Margulis did not originate the symbiotic theory of mitochondria and chloroplasts, but she was its major proponent in the era of molecular biology.

I met her on three occasions. She was always very nice to me, in spite of my being a stuck-in-the-mud advocate of the Modern Synthesis. However when I heard her lecture at a large meeting, I was astonished by her style. Not at all a calm presentation of evidence, but an evangelical sermon delivered with considerable intensity. (She was married to Carl Sagan when young, and it crossed my mind that their family arguments must have been remarkable to hear).

In later life she advocated many questionable causes. She argued that all cell organelles were the result of symbiosis events. She also argued that all speciation was the result of symbiosis. (Really? Every pair of sibling species of sparrow needs a symbiosis event?) She was also the National Academy of Sciences member most responsible for the abortive publication of the disastrous paper by D.I. Williamson proposing that insect larvae originated by hybridization with onychophorans (see account here). And of course there was her promotion of Gaia and of HIV/AIDS skepticism. She seemed to be powerfully motivated to overturn apple carts.

Of course, in the case of mitochondria and chloroplasts, that was the right thing to do.

Joe Felsenstein said: She was married to Carl Sagan when young, and it crossed my mind that their family arguments must have been remarkable to hear

The picture that he paints is not a pretty one. Sagan's first marriage, to noted biologist Lynn Margulis, suffered from his neediness and blinkered obsession with his career—she referred to it as "a torture chamber shared with children."

In later life she advocated many questionable causes. She argued that all cell organelles were the result of symbiosis events. She also argued that all speciation was the result of symbiosis. (Really? Every pair of sibling species of sparrow needs a symbiosis event?) ... Of course, in the case of mitochondria and chloroplasts, that was the right thing to do.

callahanpb said: ... Maybe the moral to this story is that it's OK for an individual scientist to promote a single-bullet theory, because that's what they will throw their energy into. Because it's a collaborative, self-correcting effort, there is no reason to fear a particular researcher being wrong about something (as long as they're not dishonest anyway).

Joe Felsenstein said: The 43 people in the Third Way site include quite a few who are promoting single-bullet explanations. And they're not all promoting the same bullet.

Let me quibble a little with that. The Third Way site is not saying "we don't know the answer". It is saying it has a Third Way, but they haven't taken the vote yet to choose which of the 43 ways is The Third Way.

Well they can't agree on what is wrong with modern evolutionary theory, but they do all seem to agree that creationism is not the answer. Why would a creationist want to draw attention to this? Perhaps the big tent is bursting at the seams when they try to let in creation deniers.

And of course they can't vote on which of the 43 ways is correct. First of all, they would get 43 different votes for 43 different ideas. Second, if two of them did somehow agree to appear to agree on something and outvoted all the others, they would just be left with two people who still really disagreed with each other.

If only they'd stopped at 42 ways, then they might have the answer... (to life, the universe, and everything!)

Well, maybe one of the 43 ideas is wrong. The rest are then The Answer as well as being The Third Way.

Maybe they all will undergo random mutations and then natural selection will take over.

No, I think their mechanism is Lamarckian -- these theories spring from pure will power, unrelated to anything in the outside world.

Particularly in the U.S., where there’s a culture of self-promotion, we continually have to deal with this. It makes it harder for the public to understand what is going on, when the popular science press endlessly has articles announcing that one or another single-bullet explanation has now solved all problems.

Perhaps the big tent is bursting at the seams when they try to let in creation deniers.

Joe Felsenstein said: No, I think their mechanism is Lamarckian -- these theories spring from pure will power, unrelated to anything in the outside world.

Joe Felsenstein said: No, I think their mechanism is Lamarckian -- these theories spring from pure will power, unrelated to anything in the outside world.

Mike Elzinga said:

Joe Felsenstein said: No, I think their mechanism is Lamarckian -- these theories spring from pure will power, unrelated to anything in the outside world.

LOL! :-) That's a good way of putting it. Good ideas connected to reality come with intense, deep immersion in one's research. I have had many such experiences; and, interestingly, they often come at a time when one is doing something else and not thinking about the particular challenge one is dealing with in the research. Some of my best ideas came when I was doing my regular 2.6 mile walk from home to the lab or back. At other times, insights flash into the mind upon finally seeing the raw data coming in; but those insights are unlikely if one hasn't already invested an intense amount of work into designing and building the experiment in the first place. And, as just about anyone who has spent a life in research - whether pure or applied; I've done both - knows, when the insights are correct, there are lots of technological spin-offs that come almost immediately. The insights become the best current match to the reality of the natural world. By contrast, look at the results of something like ID/creationism's several hundred man-years (yes, all males) of sitting in offices, cycling through the same hackneyed "theories," and without even looking out the window let alone doing any hands-on research. I prefer the real world of research. It can be rough; but it eventually gets it right, and that makes it worth all the hard work. I don't understand how anyone can tolerate the "work environment" of ID/creationism; one has to be pretty stupid and clueless in order to do so. The only payoff seems to be some kind of "celebrity" status within a relatively small subculture; cheap robes for fantasy scholarship.