The theory that fisheries should allow harvesting of small fish and protect large fish has been around for a while.

Any reports of miniature elephants roaming Africa these days?

Peter:

Elephants have slightly longer generations than codfish.

So is OJ suggesting that the intelligent fishermen catch fish with the goal of making future generations of fish smaller?

Or is he, as I suspect, missing the point once again?

OJ:

Your conclusion is surely the most preposterous anti-Darwinian screed you have written yet.

There was selection based on variation within a population; whether "natural" or not, the results are completely consistent with evolutionary theory.

Mike:

But the mountain sheep lives from 8 to 16 years, which means this evolution took place over 2-4 generations. You buying that?

Meanwhile, those dumb old buffalo just kept on growing to slaughterable size.

I'm not anti-Darwin but I'd bet the smaller species have been there all along.

The Mountain Sheep phenomenon is based on the theories behind animal husbandry, human intervention/selection. Natural selection implies natural intervention obtaining different/random results, some more successful than others, as judged by nature, including predators.

S.J. Gould's theories on the subject seem to best describe Darwin's intent.

The author of this article is reaching beyond reality. May be a enviromentista.

Peter:

Dunno what's up with the rams, if anything. I would believe "Any ram with big horns gets shot, so now all the rams have little horns." and that not much evolution per se has happened.

OTOH, Evolution might work that fast - if space aliens were wandering around zapping all humans more than six feet tall, I suspect it would get pretty uncommon in 4 generations.

Umm, if I recall correctly, evolution explains the emergence of species. Are smaller animals a different species from larger ones? Heard of breeding anyone? Anyone seen a chihuahua the size of a Great Dane?

Attempts to press this phenomenon into the service of supporting evolution is a sign of desperation: A form of wildeyed extrapolation considered doubtful in a physics lab, but necessary in a biology lab. Take a spring: a description of it's force to stretch ratios is well known (f=kx), but the formula fails because it doesn't take into account material strain failure that puts an effective limit on "x", even though the bare formula "allows" you to compute a "force" for a 5 inch spring stretched out to the moon.

Evolution is a similar extrapolation from the known phenomenon of "breeding", assuming that there are no effective limits to change. Accept the assumption, and evolution is no problem. Question the assumption, and it poses problems.

I was a physics major. Wild extrapolations bother me.

Jeff:

I agree. Evolution requires non-natural intervention.

There's a well-known principle that species trapped on small islands often become smaller in average size over time. Some islands off Siberia had "dwarf" mastadons:

http://sciencebulletins.amnh.org/biobulletin/biobulletin/story1044.html

The methods employed by the Grand Banks fishermen are anything but intelligent. They basically put themselves out of business by overfishing the fishery. It is a classic example of the "tragedy of the commons". When people are given unlimited access to a public natural resource, with no ownership or personal stewardship of it, there is no incentive to limit your catch. They acted no more intelligently than any other predator.

Robert:

As always, you confuse intelligent with wise. Looking at our species it's easy to doubt that even the Creator is wise, but He's obviously intelligent.

Ptah:

Yeah, but if you try to stretch a spring to the moon you'll get one that's smaller and different, yet still a spring...

as well as a product of intelligent design.

Robert -- The tragedy of the commons is that it is not owned, not that people, faced with an unowned resource, rationally decide to get while the getting is good.

OJ:

"As always, you confuse intelligent with wise."

No, you confuse intelligent design with conscious action.

Why is why you can't understand that people utter words consciously, but that at the same time languages develop without intelligent design.

Because they are a function of intelligent design. However, if you, like Jeff, think that neither language nor economics nor politics, are functions of intelligence and are therefore identical to evolution then I agree with your assessment just not your characterization. Evolution probably involves no more and no less instances of rational design making by sentient life than the others.

A crucial element of 'intelligent design' when it comes to the evolution of a species, is 'design'.

If, when they went out a-hunting, the fisherman had the aim (or 'design') of producing smaller fish in future generations, that would indeed be intelligent design.

But if, as is the case here, the fact that the population is getting smaller is just an accidental (indeed, undesirable) by-product of the actions of the fishermen, that is not design.

And the intelligence, consciousness or otherwise of the predator (which happens to be humans in this case) is, if you'll pardon the expression, a red herring.

If you set out to catch all the big fish--or rams or whatever--you're left with smaller ones.

Indeed.

So it was intelligent design, though perhaps not wise.

No, it wasn't 'design' at all. The fisherman are just behaving like predators, wise or otherwise. The change in the species is a by-product of that behaviour.

Regulators who put limits on the scale and nature of the fishing in order to preseve the species its current form are doing 'intelligent design'.

Not the fishermen. They just catch what people want to eat.

Group A decides to catch big fish--this is not design?

Group B decides to catch small fish--this is design?

Nothing could be simpler, OJ.

Whether an action and its results qualifies as 'designed' depends on the intention behind the action.

If Group A catches big fish solely because the gaps in their nets happen to be this particular size so most small fish get through, and consequently the population gets smaller within a few generations, that's not design. The change in the species is an accident.

If Group B catches big fish because they want the population to get smaller in the next few generations, that would be design. Maybe they don't like big fish cos they're ugly, I dunno. Maybe they like to do a bit of species engineering for the fun of it. Either way the change in the species would not be an accident. It would have been designed.

For something to qualify as 'intelligent design', 'design' must be present, not just 'intelligence' (or, what you actually mean, 'consciousness').

why?

Because we don't all speak OJ's special language where 'yes' means 'no' and 'design' means 'accident'.

What has ever been designed?

Pre-humans, nowt.

Post-humans, I guess you could say pedigree dogs and racehorses are 'designed.'

And they turned out precisely the way breeders wanted them to?

Breeding individuals doesn't count as 'intelligent design' on an evolutionary scale either, hence the scare quotes.

I quite like your latest theory of evolution: a Designer who isn't very good at it. He's conscious and can intervene, but neither wise nor omnipotent. Things don't always turn out as He wants, and he has lots of experiments that go wrong (well, that explains extinction).

I'd call it "Semi-intelligent rough-design" and patent it if I were you.

It certianly fits the facts a lot better than the traditional notion of Intelligent Design.

Occam still doesn't like it though.

Nor only that. Even if they did turn out exactly as the breeders wanted on a step by step basis, if I understand Brit and Jeff, it apparently doesn't count as design unless the breeders forsaw each and every step and knew exactly what they would look like in the end and where the whole process would stop.

We know from the Bible that we didn't turn out as He intended us to. Indeed, nothing has ever turned out exactly the way anyone intended.

Well I can't speak on the behalf of the Bible, but I'd agree with you in that if there is a Designer, he is far more likely to be your Semi-Intelligent Rough-Designer who got to this stage largely by trail-and-error and accident, than the Intelligent Designer who smoothly created the best of all possible worlds.

Sort of a cosmic Bodgitt and Scarper Ltd.

"Robert -- The tragedy of the commons is that it is not owned, not that people, faced with an unowned resource, rationally decide to get while the getting is good."

It is only rational at a very elementary level, a level that we share with animals. Animals instinctively get while the getting is good. Fulfilling immediate needs without thinking ahead and provisioning for the future is not a sign of intelligent rational behavior. If you have the intelligence to foresee that such a scheme will bankrupt itself eventually, and yet you continue in it, you are not acting rationally by human standards.

"Nor only that. Even if they did turn out exactly as the breeders wanted on a step by step basis, if I understand Brit and Jeff, it apparently doesn't count as design unless the breeders forsaw each and every step and knew exactly what they would look like in the end and where the whole process would stop."

Peter, it counts as design if you have an overall goal in mind that you are trying to acheive, and the result at least partially achieves that goal. Good design and poor design are both design. If the result in question is merely a by-product of the activity of the agent, it doesn't count as being designed. This seems pretty simple, I don't know what is so hard about it for you guys.

The last thing that the fishermen want is to create smaller fish. They want big fish, and they go out and harvest the big fish because that is their goal. They are not planning for the future size of the fish, they are only assuming (we all know that assuming requires no intelligence) that the big fish will always be there. The smaller fish are the unintended, and unplanned by-product of their actions.

OJ, by your reasoning any effect that is brought about by the activities of an intelligent being qualify as design. I suppose if a person fell from a 30 story building and landed on the roof of a bus, the shape of the dent in the roof would constitute a designed artifact.

Robert:

"Fulfilling immediate needs without thinking ahead and provisioning for the future is not a sign of intelligent rational behavior."

Sure it is, if you are starving or have fallen in love. Or if your worldview makes the idea of a future highly problematic. Russian POWS in World War 11 would gorge themselves sick feasting on Red Cross parcels the Allied prisoners smuggled them. Given how they were treated by both sides, I'd say that was rational.

Planning for the future as we do (GUILT ALERT!!) stems from an obligation to be self-sufficient and support one's family, which is a moral obligation in the end, not a rationally determined one. You have been listening to too many life insurance and financial planning ads.

I know of dozens of examples of breeders who got exactly what they were designing.

One of my brothers-in-law helped 'design' a breed of dogs that all get muscular dystrophy.

'Designing' plants with desired characteristics is routine.

It would have been helpful, in the previous 37 posts, if anybody had bothered to make a distinction between selection -- which was the subject -- and evolution, which was the object.

Exactly? Wow! You're without sin and your brother-in-law is a perfect designer. Who needs God when you';re His better.

There's a guy over at U. of Hawaii who set out to design mice that glow in the dark.

They do, too. Green.

He got exactly what he was after.

It isn't simple, but once you know the trick, it's really pretty easy.

Except the ones that don't. So they got what they wanted, but the design didn't work according to Brit's standard.

Come on, OJ. I'm an atheist. You know I don't have any standards.

Getting what they wanted completely fulfills my definition of success.

Harry:

Exactly. We dream up designs but we settle for what we get.

You need to get up to speed on this, Orrin.

I have friends on the island who can deliver you any particular trait in corn or soybeans you care to specify, if you've got the cash.

But always with unintended consequences.