From: "herb sutter" <herb.sutter@canrem.com>
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: dawkins/_the selfish
Date: 4 Sep 92 14:42:48 EST
Reply-To: "herb sutter" <herb.sutter@canrem.com>
Distribution: talk
Organization: Canada Remote Systems

(...Continuation of previous article)

In <94150#bu.edu>, colby@bu-bio.bu.edu (Chris Colby) writes:
>In article <1992Aug19.929.16430@dosgate> "herb sutter"
><herb.sutter@canrem.com> writes:
>
>>While there is obviously great variety within dogs (and within cats, and
>>horses, etc.), no matter how much time you allow one does not change into
>>another.
>
>Do you have any evidence to support this?

There have been centuries of intelligently directed breeding of many
plants and animals; a short time compared to thousands of millenniums, but
far far more directed.  Is it not surprising that, if evolution does in
fact give rise to different `kinds' by natural selection, genetic drift,
and other methods, that something of the sort has not been observed in all
this intelligently directed breeding and cross-breeding?  Here again I
mean not just a new species (which has been observed), but something of a
different `kind'.

>
>>While animals within the dog
>>`kind' (for example) may interbreed and form new varieties of dogs, you
>>can breed dogs for aeons and (breeding evidence seems to prove) you will
>>always end up with a dog.
>
>Or at least you can keep calling it "dog" even though mastiffs and
>schnausers are both examples of "dog". Doesn't this strike you as
>a really dopey semantic argument?

I appreciate your viewpoint, though I'm sorry you think so.  I was being
serious.  Both are of the same `kind'.  For greater contrast, one could
juxtapose chihuahuas and St Bernards.  :-) I understand your objection,
but I don't feel it's valid in this case; aren't there strict taxonomic
definitions for what constitutes "dog" and what constitutes "cat" (etc.)?
So isn't what I said true, namely that "you can breed dogs for aeons and
(breeding evidence seems to prove) you will always end up with a dog"?
You feel it isn't true, but could you show me a counterexample from
recorded breeding experience where some major change like this was
actually observed?

>
>>(In fact, in experiments with deliberately
>>mutated fruit flies, after several generations even the mutants eventually
>>bred true unmutated fruit flies again -- quite an interesting result.)
>
>Ever actually read these papers? (Or ever heard that Dobzhansky had
>a speciation event occur in his lab while working with fruit flies?)

No, and yes, respectively.  (I've assumed the papers would be far too
technical for someone of my level, so I didn't think it would be any use
trying to read them; if you think I'd be able to understand them without
knowing all the jargon, let me know and I'll look them up.  I've been
restricting myself to Dawkins' _The Blind Watchmaker_ and _The Selfish
Gene_ and things like that recently.  Just started both as a result of
this thread.)

I don't mean to single out one of Dobzhansky's results and warp it into
saying something that it doesn't.  What I wanted to demonstrate was the
fact of genetic repair and other mechanisms resisting gene changes, which
I feel are part of the mechanisms put in place to keep organisms from
developing outside their parent `kind'.  As I said, it was an "interesting
result," not a rigorous proof on its own.  The fact that, even after
generations of mutation at hundreds and thousands of times the normal
rate, mutant fruit flies began again to bring forth original unmutated
flies shows (to me) a great resistance to even minor permanent change and
a natural order against growing into something outside its `kind'.

I think someone asked for a rigorous definition of `kind'.  I was asked
the same question in email and tentatively put one forward (without
thinking about it all that much and without being an expert in the field -
You Have Been Warned!); if posting it would help, I'd like to get your
feedback.

Herb

.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------.
| The optimist believes that we live in the best of all possible worlds.      |
| The pessimist fears that this is true.                                      |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|UUCP:canrem!herb.sutter INTERNET:herb.sutter@canrem.com COMPUSERVE:70312,1233|
`-----------------------------------------------------------------------------'

:DeLuxe2 1.12 #9091 * File not found.  Should I fake it? (Y/N)
--
Canada Remote Systems  - Toronto, Ontario/Detroit, MI
World's Largest PCBOARD System - 416-629-7000/629-7044