If it ain't broke, why fix it?

Of course, that's the necessary anmswer in a closed theory.

The real difficulty highlighted by this article is the problem with the definiton of 'species'. Paleontology must necessarily use a morphological definition, while neo-darwinism has 'evolved' to a definition involving inter-breeding geographically limited populations.

"This study shows that, while we can draw a firm boundary around a species we see today in the landscape, we can't draw a firm boundary around species through time - the definition gets fuzzy," Barnosky added.

It gets 'fuzzy' because of the shift from one definition to another. Furthermore, the morphological definition has great difficulty distinguishing between mere varieties and species. (Imagine a paleontologist comparing the skeletons of a toy poodle and a St. Bernard) In the extreme, this would mean that the entire fossil record is irrelevant to modern evolutionary theory because of incompatible evidentiary and theoretical definitions. However, the best quote was:

"It's likely that speciation takes place over a longer time interval than extinction," Barnosky said.

This, of course, is absurd. If extinction occurs before speciation, there would not be any species.

Geospecies and chronospecies, which are not the same thing, have been conflated. The author is an incompetent. You need to raise your standards, Orrin.

What Harry said.

It is almost certain that a modern vole could not breed with one of 800,000 years ago. And it is just as certain there is an unbroken line of descent between the two.

It's called virtual speciation.

A vole is a vole is a vole. Owls too apparently.

jd:

The absurdity is the point.

Why is it almost certain the modern vole couldn't breed with the ancestor? And why is the descent certain?

And while we are at it, what the heck is a vole? Don't you evolutionists ever cringe at the fact that the speciation "proofs" are are so obscure? Saturday Night Live would have a field day here.

Peter -- I assume because one of them's dead.

Peter:

My argument is statistical (and why I said virtually certain--absent intact DNA from then, it is impossible to know). DNA accumulates changes randomly. If breeding populations are isolated for long enough, then there will be enough disparate changes to make the populations unable to breed, despite the overall appearance being essentially the same.

One can isolate populations in several ways (plate tectonics did, and the fossil record shows the results very clearly). One of those ways is through time.

I have read that there had been enough accumulated difference between Australian Aboriginal DNA and the rest of humanity that should the geographic isolation lasted roughly another 50,000 years, they would have constituted a separate species.

The language analog is this: There is an unbroken line of descent from Shakespearean times to today. Yet should you decide tomorrow to use the English of that time, today's speaker would find you virtually unintelligible--the analog for speciation.

Hence virtual extinction, despite an unbroken line of descent.

Jeff:

Each and every change in the English language since Shakespeare had a purpose, usually a bad one.

Jeff:

Funny how you always resort to analogies that require intelligent guidance.

Mr. Judd;

What intelligent guidance was there in language shifts? Could you point out who exactly guided those linguistic shifts?

People decided it was easier to say "isn't" than "is not".

That does not explain the Great Vowel Shift, though, Orrin. It is not easier or harder to pronounce the Hahvadh "a" than the flat "a."

Ratty in "The Wind in the Willows" was a vole. Nothing obscure about it, Peter. One of the three or four most common mammals in the British Isles, although, sadly, in decline due to introduced competitors and predators.

No man of wealth and breeding wishes to speak like the rabble.

AOG

You are making the mistake of equating intelligent guidance with intelligence in its everyday sense.

Language shifts may have been to clarify, tease rebel, decorate, confuse, inspire, modernize, regularize, simplify, complicate, pontificate or whatever, but they all had a purpose. Not like those peasky voles!

Peter:

One of the claims evolutionary theory makes is that certain types of complex systems change over time without any plan or external guidance.

Unless you can identify the Plan English was working to, or the external planner, then it gets rather hard to ignore that assertion.

Take something simple--since geographic separation, American English has had considerable accent drift from English English--and, if allowed to continue long enough, would have resulted in mutual unintelligibility.

What, pray tell, was the purpose behind that?

OJ:

Actually, I choose analogies with observable cycle times. Intelligence acts as the means of inheritance and source of variation, and is analagous to DNA in that respect.

Jeff:

I agree. DNA is merely the language used by an intelligent being or beings to transmit information. Welcome to Creationism.

OJ:

And your evidence that some intelligent being created DNA would be?

The same as for the Rosetta Stone.

That old clockmaker argument doesn't hold water.

Yet there's a clock.

Which, absent any other evidence, is all you can say about the clock--that it exists, but not how it came to get there.

Bingo! I see the clock and assume an intelligent being must have made it--you see it and assume it arose from nature. Both of us merely make assumptions.

If you're going to make analogies, make sure you understand them.

Voicegrams now prove that children always pronounce words slightly differently from their parents, and this is universal.

Over enough generations, you get big shifts. They are not, however, directional.

So the remark about the upper classes won't work to explain the Great Vowel Shift. It remains unexplained.

That explains it quite nicely. The upper class thinks itself the parent.

Oh, this is getting wild. You guys admit to huge evidentiary gaps in evolution and cling desperately to peahens and voles, but then suddenly you rise and proclaim with confidence that the development of language comes, not from the progression of poets and writers we all learned about in English 101, but from something called the Great Vowel Shift. In capitals no less.

You really should get out more.

OJ:

Wrong. You make a conclusion from ignorance.

I admit my ignorance and conclude, not that it arose from nature, but rather "I don't know."

There's a difference.

So you don't believe in Darwinism?

I believe in evolution (why do you persist in using the term Darwinism?), because of the supporting evidence and the lack of contradictory evidence.

I am agnostic about how life got started, because of the complete lack of evidence to support or contradict any theory.

Jeff:

I support Creation for the same reason and Creation via Evolution. Thus the use of Darwinism to differentiate your belief that Evolution is entirely a coincidental process of nature.

Thus the misuse of the term. You have mis-appropriated the term "Evolution," then misapplied the term "Darwinism" no matter what your correspondent intends.

I'll remember that next time you take Maureen Dowd to task.

ev·o·lu·tion ( P ) Pronunciation Key (v-lshn, v-)
n.
A gradual process in which something changes into a different and usually more complex or better form. See Synonyms at development.

The process of developing.
Gradual development.
Biology.

Change in the genetic composition of a population during successive generations, as a result of natural selection acting on the genetic variation among individuals, and resulting in the development of new species.

The historical development of a related group of organisms; phylogeny.

A movement that is part of a set of ordered movements.