reply to post by monkey_descendant
I know I'm pretty much banging my head against the wall with you guys.
Because this is your religion.
Here is a couple quotes that apply directly to the question of micro-macro evolution. For all the undecided or confused readers.
"... the attitude of population geneticists to any paleontologist rash enough to offer a contribution to evolutionary theory has been to tell him to
go away and find another fossil, and not to bother the grownups." (Maynard Smith, 1984)
Among all the claims made during the evolutionary synthesis, perhaps the one that found least acceptance was the assertion that all phenomena of
macro evolution can be ‘reduced to,' that is, explained by, micro evolutionary genetic processes. Not surprisingly, this claim was usually
supported by geneticists but was widely rejected by the very biologists who dealt with macro evolution, the morphologists and paleontologists. Many of
them insisted that there is more or less complete discontinuity between the processes at the two levels—that what happens at the species level is
entirely different from what happens at the level of the higher categories. Now, 50 years later the controversy remains undecided. Ernst Mayer
We do not advance some special theory for long times and large transitions, fundamentally opposed to the processes of micro evolution. Rather, we
maintain that nature is organized hierarchically and that no smooth continuum leads across levels. We may attain a unified theory of process, but the
processes work differently at different levels and we cannot extrapolate from one level to encompass all events at the next. I believe, in fact, that
... speciation by splitting guarantees that macro evolution must be studied at its own level. ... [S]election among species—not an extrapolation of
changes in gene frequencies within populations—may be the motor of macro evolutionary trends. If macro evolution is, as I believe, mainly a story of
the differential success of certain kinds of species and, if most species change little in the phyletic mode during the course of their existence,
then micro evolutionary change within populations is not the stuff (by extrapolation) of major transformations. Stephen Jay Gould
All the types,( I've discussed in this thread), are of the same species.
Tortoises, iguanas, finches, that have experienced "founders effect",
can still interbreed and produce offspring that are fertile. Even though some of these animals have been separated by thousands of miles and thousands
of years!
Quibbling about the meanings of words is not going to change this fact, into Classical evolution, macro evolution, Darwinism, or what ever you
want to call, "all life evolving from a common ancestor.
[edit on 13-5-2008 by Howie47]
