From: colby@bu-bio.bu.edu (Chris Colby)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: cotera skims Futuyma
Date: 19 Dec 92 17:11:50 GMT
Organization: animal -- coelomate -- deuterostome

In article <1992Dec10.084953.1@woods.ulowell.edu> cotera@woods.ulowell.edu writes:
>I'd like to thank Andy Peters for recommending the book "Evolutionary Biology"
>by Douglas J. Futuyma.  I skimmed through it and found some pretty good
>stuff.
 
Ray,
First of all, thanks for at least looking at Futuyma. However, I would
encourage you to do more than skim it. You have shown a shred of intell-
ectual honesty by making a minimal effort to understand our side; show
a little more by actually trying to understand evolution (understand
does not equal believe). If you are really confident that your beliefs
are best, it should not bother you to take an extended look at
evolution. At the very least, you can know your "enemy".

If you have any questions, you can email me and I'd be glad to
answer them. Evolution is fairly simple to understand once you 
get a few ideas straight in your head (viewing populations as
collections of individuals with different alleles is key, as is
having a good grasp of selection, linkage disequilibrium and drift
(doing the math, of course, helps immensely - Futuyma presents
the absolute basics).

>     "The analysis of virtually all questions about the history of evolution
>      requires that the phylogenetic history of groups of species--the
>      relationships among them--be INFERRED." [emphasis mine]
>                                             pg. 315
>
>Thus there is no proof, or even hard evidence, that the history of life has
>evolved the way evolutionists have claimed.

There is plenty of "hard" evidence (i.e. fossils 8-) to support the
inference of common descent. There is also comparative biochemical
studies, comparative anatomy and development, and biogeography. The
overall pattern of characters distributed amongst taxa is strong
evidence of common descent (and a prediction when new species are
found -- if you find a new species of wren and sequence a gene in
it, you would predict that it will cluster with other wrens rather
than with bacteria, protists, plants, inverts or etc.) If you
have Futuyma , you can hardly say there is no hard evidence for
he discusses it in the text. You can disagree with the quality or
interpretation of the evidence; but claiming it doesn't exist is
dishonest. 

>And just skimming through the book
>as I did you'll find he uses the word "inferred" a lot.

Good, in other words Futuyma isn't making bald assertions. He is
presenting the evidence and explaining how it has been interpreted.
Are you complementing him on his writing style or don't you under-
stand what "inferred" means?

>And how about this little gem:
>
>     "...subspecies are quite arbitrarily defined; and...the same is true of
>      genera, families, and other higher catagories of classification."
>                                                                      pg. 111

Ray, what does this have to do with anything? Everyone knows that the
the definition(s) of species are not adequate. This is not evidence against
the process of evolution or the inference of common descent.

[the rest deleted]

>--Ray Cote

Chris Colby 	---	 email: colby@bu-bio.bu.edu	---
"'My boy,' he said, 'you are descended from a long line of determined,
resourceful, microscopic tadpoles--champions every one.'"
 	--Kurt Vonnegut from "Galapagos"