From: welsberr@orca.tamu.edu (Wesley R. Elsberry)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.christian,alt.christnet,talk.origins
Subject: Re: Creationism/Evolution
Date: 10 Apr 1995 08:53:24 GMT
Lines: 283
Message-Id: <3marm4$nj7@news.tamu.edu>

I recently gathered some quotes on Darwin and theories of multiplication of species and punctuated equilibria. This seems like a good opportunity to post them.

Charles Darwin, from the First Edition of The Origin of Species:

That natural selection will always act with extreme slowness, I fully admit. Its action depends on there being places in the polity of nature, which can be better occupied by some of the inhabitants of the country undergoing modification of some kind. The existence of such places will often depend on physical changes, which are generally very slow, and on the immigration of better adapted forms having been checked. But the action of natural selection will probably still oftener depend on some of the inhabitants becoming slowly modified; the mutual relations of many of the other inhabitants being thus disturbed. Nothing can be effected, unless favourable variations occur, and variation itself is apparently always a very slow process. The process will often be greatly retarded by free intercrossing. Many will exclaim that these several causes are amply sufficient wholly to stop the action of natural selection. do not believe so. On the other hand, I do believe that natural selection will always act very slowly, often only at long intervals of time, and generally on only a very few of the inhabitants of the same region at the same time. I further believe, that this very slow, intermittent action of natural selection accords perfectly well with what geology tells us of the rate and manner at which the inhabitants of this world have changed. (pp. 152-153) [The above is highly noteworthy, since it records Darwin's recognition of the *intermittent* action of natural selection, and not just the intermittent nature of the fossil record. PE folks owe their source concepts to Darwin. In 1900, three separate researchers published on population genetics, and each separately had found and given priority to Mendel for the concepts. It is too bad that the 'genetic revolutionists' and 'punctuated equilibrists' did not deal similarly with Darwin. - WRE]

After ten thousand generations, species (A) is supposed to have produced three forms, a10, f10, and m10, which, from having diverged in character during the successive generations, will have come to differ largely, but perhaps unequally, from each other and from their common parent. If we suppose the amount of change between each horizontal line in our diagram to be excessively small, these three forms may still be only well-marked varieties; or they may have arrived at the doubtful category of sub-species; but we have only to suppose the steps in the process of modification to be more numerous or greater in amount, to convert these three forms into well-defined species: thus the diagram illustrates the steps by which the small differences distinguishing varieties are increased into the larger differences distinguishing species. By continuing the same process for a greater number of generations (as shown in the diagram in a condensed and simplified manner), we get eight species, marked by the letters between a14 and m14, all descended from (A). Thus, as I believe, species are multiplied and genera are formed.

(p.164) [I think that the above is quite clear, and settles the point nicely. - WRE]

On the sudden appearance of whole groups of Allied Species.

The abrupt manner in which whole groups of species suddenly appear in certain formations, has been urged by several palaeontologists, for instance, by Agassiz, Pictet, and by none more forcibly than by Professor Sedgwick, as a fatal objection to the belief in the transmutation of species. If numerous species, belonging to the same genera or families, have really started into life all at once, the fact would be fatal to the theory of descent with slow modification through natural selection. For the development of a group of forms, all of which have descended from some one progenitor, must have been an extremely slow process; and the progenitors must have lived long ages before their modified descendants. But we continually over-rate the perfection of the geological record, and falsely infer, because certain genera or families have not been found beneath a certain stage, that they did not exist before that stage. We continually forget how large the world is, compared with the area over which our geological formations have been carefully examined; we forget that groups of species may elsewhere have long existed and have slowly multiplied before they invaded the ancient archipelagoes of Europe and of the United States. We do not make due allowance for the enormous intervals of time, which have probably elapsed between our consecutive formations, — longer perhaps in some cases than the time required for the accumulation of each formation. These intervals will have given time for the multiplication of species from some one or some few parent-forms; and in the succeeding formation such species will appear as if suddenly created.

I may here recall a remark formerly made, namely that it might require a long succession of ages to adapt an organism to some new and peculiar line of life, for instance to fly through the air; but that when this had been effected, and a few species had thus acquired a great advantage over other organisms, a comparatively short time would be necessary to produce many divergent forms, which would be able to spread rapidly and widely throughout the world.

(pp. 309-310) [Looks like adaptive radiation to me. - WRE]

Dominant species spreading from any region might encounter still more dominant species, and then their triumphant course, or even their existence, would cease. We know not at all precisely what are all the conditions most favourable for the multiplication of new and dominant species; but we can, I think, clearly see that a number of individuals, from giving a better chance of the appearance of favourable variations, and that severe competition with many already existing forms, would be highly favourable, as would be the power of spreading into new territories. A certain amount of isolation, recurring at long intervals of time, would probably be also favourable, as before explained. One quarter of the world may have been most favourable for the production of new and dominant species on the land, and another for those in the waters of the sea. If two great regions had been for a long period favourably circumstanced in an equal degree, whenever their inhabitants met, the battle would be prolonged and severe; and some from one birthplace and some from the other might be victorious. But in the course of time, the forms dominant in the highest degree, wherever produced, would tend everywhere to prevail. As they prevailed, they would cause the extinction of other and inferior forms; and as these inferior forms would be allied in groups by inheritance, whole groups would tend slowly to disappear; though here and there a single member might long be enabled to survive.

Thus, as it seems to me, the parallel, and, taken in a large sense, simultaneous, succession of the same forms of life throughout the world, accords well with the principle of new species having been formed by dominant species spreading widely and varying; the new species thus produced being themselves dominant owing to inheritance, and to having already had some advantage over their parents or over other species; these again spreading, varying, and producing new species. The forms which are beaten and which yield their places to the new and victorious forms, will generally be allied in groups, from inheriting some inferiority in common; and therefore as new and improved groups spread throughout the world, old groups will disappear from the world; and the succession of forms in both ways will everywhere tend to correspond.

(pp 327-328)

Passing from these difficulties, all the other great leading facts in palaeontology seem to me simply to follow on the theory of descent with modification through natural selection. We can thus understand how it is that new species come in slowly and successively; how species of different classes do not necessarily change together, or at the same rate, or in the same degree; yet in the long run that all undergo modification to some extent. The extinction of old forms is the almost inevitable consequence of the production of new forms. We can understand why when a species has once disappeared it never reappears. Groups of species increase in numbers slowly, and endure for unequal periods of time; for the process of modification is necessarily slow, and depends on many complex contingencies. The dominant species of the larger dominant groups tend to leave many modified descendants, and thus new sub-groups and groups are formed. As these are formed, the species of the less vigorous groups, from their inferiority inherited from a common progenitor, tend to become extinct together, and to leave no modified offspring on the face of the earth. But the utter extinction of a whole group of species may often be a very slow process, from the survival of a few descendants, lingering in protected and isolated situations. When a group has once wholly disappeared, it does not reappear; for the link of generation has been broken.

(p. 342)

This relation between the power and extent of migration of a species, either at the present time or at some former period under different physical conditions, and the existence at remote points of the world of other species allied to it, is shown in another and more general way. Mr. Gould remarked to me long ago, that in those genera of birds which range over the world, many of the species have very wide ranges. I can hardly doubt that this rule is generally true, though it would be difficult to prove it. Amongst mammals, we see it strikingly displayed in Bats, and in a lesser degree in the Felidae and Canidae. We see it, if we compare the distribution of butterflies and beetles. So it is with most fresh-water productions, in which so many genera range over the world, and many individual species have enormous ranges. It is not meant that in world-ranging genera all the species have a wide range, or even that they have on an average a wide range; but only that some of the species range very widely; for the facility with which widely-ranging species vary and give rise to new forms will largely determine their average range. For instance, two varieties of the same species inhabit America and Europe, and the species thus has an immense range; but, if the variation had been a little greater, the two varieties would have been ranked as distinct species, and the common range would have been greatly reduced. Still less is it meant, that a species which apparently has the capacity of crossing barriers and ranging widely, as in the case of certain powerfully-winged birds, will necessarily range widely; for we should never forget that to range widely implies not only the power of crossing barriers, but the more important power of being victorious in distant lands in the struggle for life with foreign associates. But on the view of all the species of a genus having descended from a single parent, though now distributed to the most remote points of the world, we ought to find, and I believe as a general rule we do find, that some at least of the species range very widely; for it is necessary that the unmodified parent should range widely, undergoing modification during its diffusion, and should place itself under diverse conditions favourable for the conversion of its offspring, firstly into new varieties and ultimately into new species.

(pp. 390-391)

I can answer these questions and grave objections only on the supposition that the geological record is far more imperfect than most geologists believe. It cannot be objected that there has not been time sufficient for any amount of organic change; for the lapse of time has been so great as to be utterly inappreciable by the human intellect. The number of specimens in all our museums is absolutely as nothing compared with the countless generations of countless species which certainly have existed. We should not be able to recognise a species as the parent of any one or more species if we were to examine them ever so closely, unless we likewise possessed many of the intermediate links between their past or parent and present states; and these many links we could hardly ever expect to discover, owing to the imperfection of the geological record. Numerous existing doubtful forms could be named which are probably varieties; but who will pretend that in future ages so many fossil links will be discovered, that naturalists will be able to decide, on the common view, whether or not these doubtful forms are varieties? As long as most of the links between any two species are unknown, if any one link or intermediate variety be discovered, it will simply be classed as another and distinct species. Only a small portion of the world has been geologically explored. Only organic beings of certain classes can be preserved in a fossil condition, at least in any great number. Widely ranging species vary most, and varieties are often at first local, — both causes rendering the discovery of intermediate links less likely. Local varieties will not spread into other and distant regions until they are considerably modified and improved; and when they do spread, if discovered in a geological formation, they will appear as if suddenly created there, and will be simply classed as new species. Most formations have been intermittent in their accumulation; and their duration, I am inclined to believe, has been shorter than the average duration of specific forms. Successive formations are separated from each other by enormous blank intervals of time; for fossiliferous formations, thick enough to resist future degradation, can be accumulated only where much sediment is deposited on the subsiding bed of the sea. During the alternate periods of elevation and of stationary level the record will be blank. During these latter periods there will probably be more variability in the forms of life; during periods of subsidence, more extinction.

(pp. 439-440)

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Wesley R. Elsberry wre2889@tam2000.tamu.edu | Central Neural System BBS
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