From: cjhs@minster.york.ac.uk
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: wallabies (was Re: Changing your mind)
Date: 6 Apr 92 10:42:37 GMT
Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of York, England

in article <1992Mar27.140249.4180@city.cs>, lionel@cs.city.ac.uk (Lionel Tun) says:
> 
> In article <salem.701629673@pangea.Stanford.EDU> salem@pangea.Stanford.EDU (Bruce Salem) writes:
>>
>>jimh@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu (Jim) writes:
>>
>>>Okay.  Name one fact.  Something that has been observed evolving.
>>>I have no desire to disprove evolution!  I keep hearing it
>>>refered to as a fact and I would like to see these facts.  
>>
>>	I think that the discussions and citations given show
>>that there is strong evidence in hand for speciation, that is,
>>macroevolution.
> 
> This wallably business illustrates how the term species is used
> to support the theory of evolution. Surely a wallaby is still a
> wallaby?

It illustrates no such thing. There are many species of wallaby. Now
(apparently) there is a new one.

The wallaby case is proof that characteristics of a population can
change over time in reponse to a new environment, to the point where
the population is recognizably different from the source stock, and is
no longer able to interbreed with source stock as a single population.

That is the definition of species; this definition was NOT proposed in
order to hoodwink people into thinking that evolution occurs.

This being said, I remain skeptical on the wallaby case. See my next
posting.

>>What I wanted to point out is that alot of science
>>is founded on emperical abstraction on data that is not collected
>>from real time events.
> 
> In other words from this scale of observation (ie small scale)
> a general theory of evolution of _the entire_ animal and plant
> kingdoms is constructed.

No, the theory of evolution is NOT based only upon small scale
observations of speciation extrapolated up to the whole animal and
plant kingdoms.  The theory of evolution is based on a lot of other
data as well; DNA, fossil records, dating techniques, observations of
similar species, etc.

>>In other words, the artifacts of historical
>>processes, though examined in real time over and over again, such
>>as a geological site, need to be interpeted via an historical
>>process applied to science. The same is true of the inference that
>>similarity of forms in the biota is due to common descant. The
>>constellation of forms is static, or nearly so, though our
>>abstraction of it is dynamic, but making the inference, which
>>is strongly supported, that it is due to evolution under some
>>hypothetical process, is due to applying a historical interpetation
>>to the nearly static information and them looking for newly
>>discovered artifacts that test the inferance.
> 
> In other words its still a theory based purely on interpretation
> and inference. Which I think is what the original poster was
> asking.

The original poster asked for, and was given, an example of
speciation. I understand the original poster is not especially
an expert and was not pushing any particular theory or critique
of evolution. He was simply asking for an observed example of
evolution occuring. (Did I get that right Jim?)

Cheers -- Chris Ho-Stuart
Newsgroups: talk.origins