Posted by rpcman on May 01, 1998 at 18:03:40:
In Reply to: Found it? Please help, rpcman, Chris posted by Walker on May 01, 1998 at 14:38:08:
: I found these titles humorous or curious in some way,
: maybe because I don't understand the terms very well or I'm just sick.
I'll make brief comments on a couple of them. I don't know how much you have studied natural selection. I'll assume just what the teach you in standard science courses (which isn't much).
: "The Evolution of Mate Preferences for Multiple Sexual Ornaments."
This sounds like a study on sexual selection which is a very powerful component of natural selection. I haven't read anything exclusively on the subject but The Blind Watchmaker goes over it a bit. There have been some excellent PBS and Nature programs on evolution that go over sexual selection. Sexual selection could have been a very key part of human evolution. Men don't fantasize about sex with multiple partners for nothing. ;)
: " When Does Evolution by Natural Selection Prevent Extinction?"
This is covered in the textbook I previously recommended. Natural selection does far more to keep a species 'normal' and viable than it does to create new species. This is clearly demonstrated by comparing the mutation survival rates at the DNA level. Pseudogenes (which don't serve a purpose except to measure mutations) can be compared to working genes to see how well working genes are held constant through time.
: " The Major Transitions of Evolution."
This is an interesting topic. Stephen Jay Gould is the biggest proponent of PE. It is a fascinating topic to think about how fast evolution can occur when populations are small and/or climates and environments rapidly change.
: Predictions of how, when and why
: specific examples of evolution (not gene shift) will happen.
Again, evolution by natural selection is not predictable except to say that given these specific facts... this will happen. Since we don't know the precise facts predictions can be precise. We can be more precise when we are dealing with artificial selection.
: I always liked Newton's laws because they are so powerful in terms of
: predicting what will happen in the future. Every day we can make predictions
: that come true. Because of them (modify them for Einstien if you like)
: the sun rises, Planets move, if I throw a rock, it will follow a path
: predetermined by gravitational laws, every time. You simply can't deny it.
: Is anyone uncomfortable with stating a distinction between evolution and
: other sciences in terms of predictability? It certainly doesn't mean that
: evolution is less true, just less provable. Nature simply doesn't afford
: the luxury of predictability to evolution that it does to other
: sciences.
Nature provides a little more luxury with natural selection predictability than it does with Quantum Mechanics. The major difference being that someday we may be able to know all the data needed to accurately predict sort-term evolution. In the long-term predictions are worthless when you don't have the data. The same would hold true for other sciences where future data is unknown and unestimatable.