From: weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Wonderful Life
Date: 11 Sep 92 16:28:33 GMT
Reply-To: weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener)
Organization: The Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology
In-reply-to: klier@iscsvax.uni.edu

In article <1992Sep9.221308.6621@iscsvax.uni.edu>, klier@iscsvax writes:
>> I am NOT an evolutionary biologist, and have extracted all this from semi-pop
>> literature.  I have no idea what the professionals think of it.  Is there 
>> a paleontologist in the house?        

>As far as I know, the paleozoologists think that Gould is pretty much on
>the money (barring later corrections).

That's simply false.  Gould's philosophical views in WL are a minority
among Cambrian specialists.  Briggs and colleagues, for example, recently
published a rather detailed (ie, quantitative) dissent regarding Gould's
claims of higher diversity then versus now.

Moreover, it is simply unknown when certain modern phyla arose.  Gould
just assumes that they all arose during the Cambrian explosion.

In article <9SEP199214235808@portal.lasc.lockheed.com>, le01167@portal (Ron Nadel (x2025)) writes:
>I recall that the weirdest of all, and one that fit in the least, 

Not everyone accepted Conway Morris' reconstruction, btw.  Considering
that the main reason the spikes were treated as the legs is that pairing
of the "tentacles" was not found, and further considering that this is
hard to find in cases of side preservation (as is guaranteed with the
spikes in the way), many took the view that it was a spiked worm of
some sort.  (What turned out to be the convincing evidence as to which
way to orient Hallucigenia was a similar worm, but with a dozen or so
shoulder pads instead of spikes.  The only sensible reconstruction was
pads on top.)

>hallucigenia, had been predicted by Gould in his book to be a part
>of some other creature, not an organism unto itself, thereby reducing
>some of the variety.

Frankly, I have no idea why anyone ever took the idea as worth even a
mention--one of the fossils preserved a mass feeding/death of a dozen
hallucigenids in all sorts of random positions.

>		       But I think the conclusions about the other 
>organisms and their impacts on taxonomy have changed little.

Again, understanding the Cambrian is significant, but the complete revo-
lution in views that Gould claims to go with it is just not happening.
Our knowledge about the origin of the crustaceans is improving.  Debates
about the monophyletic vs the polyphyletic origin of the arthropods have
more evidence to work on.  And so on.  But new phyla are not always so
new after all, and the original views do not always prevail.  There are
paleontologists who think that wiwaxiids are molluscs, others that they
are annelids, and so on.  Even the anomalocarids and opabiniids are viewed
as not so new by some, classed in the aschelminth superphyla by some, or
as new superclasses among the arthropods (like the pentastomids), legless
they may be, by others.

In article <1992Sep9.205453.19467@ncar.ucar.edu>, chucks@uars2 (Chuck Smythe) writes:
>Point the first: even with these two corrections, the basic point seems to
>hold. Most of the Burgess genera went extinct well before the Cambrian.  The
>point is weakened but by no means contradicted.

Uh, the Burgess fauna are part of the Cambrian.  Whatever.  Gould's point
has never been established.

>Point the second: Gould didn't rely entirely on the Burgess assemblage to
>make his point about decimation.  For instance, he argues that evidently
>single-celled life constituted the entire biosphere for more than a billion
>years before multiple celled creatures appeared.  He suggests that this implies
>multiple cells were no more inevitable than intelligence; that if you ran
>the experiment of evolution many times, the most common outcome would be 
>single-celled forms only, forever.

This is a very weak argument.  Oxygen presumably might have to reach a
certain level before multicellularity can evolve.  Or some such significant
environment change.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Actually, WL is a poor book in many respects, and I consider it Gould's
worst.  His portrayal of Burgess is ridiculous.  It is _provable_ that
Burgess was not trapped in some 19th century shoehorn, preventing him
from recognizing what he discovered.  Burgess was, after all, the one
who separated the trilobites from the crustaceans.  He would have done
the same with Marella had he properly analyzed it.  Burgess also knew
the fossils should be dissected--he chiseled a few.  (He can't be held
responsible for not thinking of using a dental drill.)  Burgess also knew
some of his classifications were wrong--he was widely told that Aysheaia
looked more like an onychophoran than an annelid.

Gould also makes other pre-Whittington researchers look stupid.  He
praises Simonetta's erroneous reconstrunctions for reminding people
about the Burgess shale.  He fails to mention that Simonetta, being a
nobody Italian, did not have much access to the fossils.

There is also an unusual discrepancy between Gould's debunking of the
Burgess discovery myth in his book and in his NH essay (in BfB).  He
lets you know in the latter, but not the book, that others have tracked
the legend back to the falsifying diary pages.  Nor does he mention that
Whittington's book mentions the issue in passing.  All in all, this is
quite peculiar, since Gould is normally always ready to acknowledge prior
awareness of legend falsity.
-- 
-Matthew P Wiener (weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books