I've studied it at some length, and corresponded with Gould, though hardly at length. All in all it seems the broad consensus has been to fudge the question, rather than challenge the explanatory assumptions. The evidence of large coordinated evolutionary changes, speciation, in poorly explained short periods of time is unequivocal though. The only significant effort I know of to devise a novel mode of evolution to fit the fossil evidence is my own [http://www.synapse9.com/GTRevisSCI-2007.pdf], (though the new evo mechanism postulated in "The Plausibility of Life" would satisfy the process feedback requirements too). Quite largely the effort (summarizing 35 years of professional debate in paleontology) has been to say that the accepted modes of evolution must somehow have this effect too, even if there seems to be no particularly good explanation for how. There are some ref's in the paper.
Phil Henshaw ¸¸¸¸.·´ ¯ `·.¸¸¸¸ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 680 Ft. Washington Ave NY NY 10040 tel: 212-795-4844 e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] explorations: www.synapse9.com <http://www.synapse9.com/> -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Robert Holmes Sent: Saturday, June 09, 2007 10:20 AM To: FRIAM Subject: [FRIAM] Question from an evolutionary ignoramus I've been reading a compilation of Stephen Jay Gould's writings "The Richness of Life". One of his recurrent themes is how we have a hard time interpreting probability - he illustrates this with a discussion of hitting streaks in baseball and "hot-hands" in basketball. He claims that although psychological explanations are appealing ("when you're hot you're hot, when you're not you're not") they aren't backed up by statistics. In baseball for example, all hitting streaks have lain within a couple of standard deviations of the length you'd expect purely from a consideration of their lifetime batting average (BTW - Gould says there's one exception to this. Prizes will be awarded if you can identify it!) So that's a rather long preamble to my actual question: is Gould's punctuated equilibrium real or (like Dawkins) do we really have an incremental "creeping" evolution that we only get to see very very occasional snapshots of in the fossil record? According to some erudite boffin on NPR yesterday (so it must be true) the fossil record contains considerably less than 1% of the estimated dinosaur species (not individuals!) . If you observe creeping evolution at such a low sample rate, wouldn't that look like punctuated equilibrium? Robert
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