“Given the fact of evolution, one would expect the fossils to document a gradual steady change from ancestral forms to the descendants. But this is not what the paleontologist finds. Instead, he or she finds gaps in just about every phyletic series.” (Ernst Mayr, 无神论者,was one of the 20th century's leading evolutionary biologists, 也是1986年支持进化论statement的签名者之一-Professor Emeritus, Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University, What Evolution Is, 2001, p.14.)
“What one actually found was nothing but discontinuities: All species are separated from each other by bridgeless gaps; intermediates between species are not observed . . . The problem was even more serious at the level of the higher categories.” (Mayr, E., Animal Species and Evolution, 1982, p. 524.)
“He [Darwin] prophesied that future generations of paleontologists would fill in these gaps by diligent search….It has become abundantly clear that the fossil record will not confirm this part of Darwin’s predictions. Nor is the problem a miserably poor record. The fossil record simply shows that this prediction was wrong.” (Eldridge, Niles, 与Gould一起提出 punctuated equilibrium,另一个重要的进化论科学家, The Myths of Human Evolution, 1984, pp.45-46.)
“We are faced more with a great leap of faith . . . that gradual progressive adaptive change underlies the general pattern of evolutionary change we see in the rocks . . . than any hard evidence.” (Eldredge, N. and Tattersall, I., The Myths of Human Evolution, 1982, p. 57.)
“To explain discontinuities, Simpson relied, in part, upon the classical argument of an imperfect fossil record, but concluded that such an outstanding regularity could not be entirely artificial.” (Gould, Stephen J., “The Hardening of the Modern Synthesis,” 1983, p. 81.), 阿Q注:此处Simpson指George Gaylord Simpson, 另一个进化论大佬, "perhaps the most influential paleontologist of the twentieth century, and a major participant in the modern evolutionary synthesis"
“The record jumps, and all the evidence shows that the record is real: the gaps we see reflect real events in life’s history – not the artifact of a poor fossil record.” (Eldredge, N. and Tattersall, I., The Myths of Human Evolution, 1982, p. 59.)
“The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution.” (Gould, Stephen J., “Is a New and General Theory of Evolution Emerging?,” 1982, p. 140.)
“As we shall see when we take up the creationist position, there are all sorts of gaps: absence of graduationally intermediate ‘transitional’ forms between species, but also between larger groups — between say, families of carnivores, or the orders of mammals. In fact, the higher up the Linnaean hierarchy you look, the fewer transitional forms there seem to be.” (Eldredge, Niles, The Monkey Business: A Scientist Looks at Creationism, 1982, p. 65-66.)
“Instead of finding the gradual unfolding of life, what geologists of Darwin’s time, and geologists of the present day actually find is a highly uneven or jerky record; that is, species appear in the sequence very suddenly, show little or no change during their existence in the record, then abruptly go out of the record. and it is not always clear, in fact it’s rarely clear, that the descendants were actually better adapted than their predecessors. In other words, biological improvement is hard to find.” (Raup, David M.,古生物学家,化石专家, “Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology,” Bulletin, Field Museum of Natural History, vol. 50, 1979, p. 23.)
Chicago Field Museum, Prof. of Geology, Univ. of Chicago, “A large number of well-trained scientists outside of evolutionary biology and paleontology have unfortunately gotten the idea that the fossil record is far more Darwinian than it is. This probably comes from the oversimplification inevitable in secondary sources: low-level textbooks, semi-popular articles, and so on. Also, there is probably some wishful thinking involved. In the years after Darwin, his advocates hoped to find predictable progressions. In general, these have not been found yet the optimism has died hard, and some pure fantasy has crept into textbooks…One of the ironies of the creation evolution debate is that the creationists have accepted the mistaken notion that the fossil record shows a detailed and orderly progression and they have gone to great lengths to accommodate this ‘fact’ in their Flood (Raup, David, “Geology” New Scientist, Vol. 90, p.832, 1981.)
“Transitions between major groups of organisms . . . are difficult to establish in the fossil record.” (Stebbins, G. L., is widely regarded as one of the leading evolutionary biologists of the 20th century, Darwin to DNA, Molecules to Humanity, 1982, p. 107.)
“Well, we are now about 120 years after Darwin and the knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded. We now have a quarter of a million fossil species but the situation hasn’t changed much. The record of evolution is still surprisingly jerky and, ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin’s time. By this I mean that some of the classic cases of Darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as a result of more detailed information…” (Raup, David M.,著名古生物学家, “Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology,” Field Museum of Natural History Bulletin, vol. 50, 1979, p. 25.)
“The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nods of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils. Yet Darwin was so wedded to gradualism that he wagered his entire theory on a denial of this literal record.” (Gould, Stephen J. The Panda’s Thumb, 1980, p. 181.)
“One of the most pervasive myths in all of paleontology…is the myth that the evolutionary histories of living beings are essentially a matter of discovery. Uncertainties in our interpretations of the fossil record are ascribed to the incompleteness of that record. Find enough fossils, it is believed, and the course of evolution will somehow be revealed. But if this were really so, one could confidently expect that as more hominid fossils were found the story of human evolution would become clearer. Whereas if anything, the opposite has occurred.” (Eldredge, N. and Tattersall, I., The Myths of Human Evolution, 1982, p. 127.)
“One thing which has struck me very forcibly through they years is that most of the classic evolutionary lineages of my student days, such as Ostrea-Gryphaea and Zaphrentis delanouei, have long since lost their scientific respectability, and in spite of the plethora of palaeontological information we now have available, there seems to be very little to put in their place. In twenty years’ work on the Mesozoic Brachiopoda, I have found plenty of relationships, but few if any evolving lineages.” (Ager, D., The Nature of the Stratigraphical Record, 1981, p. 20.)
“Phylogeny…is ‘in the vast majority of cases…unknown and possibly unknowable’ (Sneath and Sokal 1973, p. 53.) On the latter point, I have come to the same conclusion.” (Patterson, Colin, “Morphological Characters and Homology,” 1982, p. 61.)
“Most groups of organisms are best visualized as highly complex phylogenetic bushes … In large parts of the natural system it is impossible to demonstrate that one particular taxonomic sequence is superior to other alternatives.” (Mayr, E. 进化论大佬之一 The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution and Inheritance, 1982, p. 242.)
“Species that were once thought to have turned into others have been found to overlap in time with these alleged descendants. In fact, the fossil record does not convincingly document a single transition from one species to another.” (Stanley, S.M., The New Evolutionary Timetable: Fossils, Genes, and the Origin of Species, 1981, p. 95.)
“A persistent problem in evolutionary biology has been the absence of intermediate forms in the fossil record. Long term gradual transformations of single lineages are rare and generally involve simple size increase or trivial phenotypic effects. Typically, the record consists of successive ancestor-descendant lineages, morphologically invariant through time and unconnected by intermediates.” (Williamson, P.G., “Palaeontological Documentation of Speciation in Cenozoic Molluscs from Turkana Basin,” Nature 293, 1982, p. 440.)
“At the higher level of evolutionary transition between basic morphological designs, gradualism has always been in trouble, though it remains the “official” position of most Western evolutionists. Smooth intermediates between Baupläne are almost impossible to construct, even in thought experiments; there is certainly no evidence for them in the fossil record (curious mosaics like Archaeopteryx do not count).” (Gould, S.J. and Eldredge, N., “Punctuated Equilibria: the Tempo and Mode of Evolution Reconsidered.” Paleobiology 3, 1977, p. 147.)
“The known fossil record fails to document a single example of phyletic evolution accomplishing a major morphologic transition.” (Stanley, Steven M., Macroevolution: Pattern and Process, 1979 p. 39.)
以前俺简单查过,Google不出究竟虎狮兽或者狮虎兽能不能生育。“骡子虽然很容易生出来,但是已经不能再生育了” 是什么意思?究竟能不能生育?麻烦两位帮忙查证一下,俺以后再学习
不过这里俺有个存疑,俺在看那些大生物家,比如Jay Gould讲为什么宏进化论必然发生的证据,他们为什么没有提骡子,狮虎兽,没有提新兰花,新小麦什么的?不管了,先记下
这个能否科普一下。如果支持Yong Earth,整个进化论谈都不用谈,所以值得花点时间。俺没有结论。看过一点资料,公说公有理,婆说婆有理,不能分辨,对双方都有存疑。但是,俺认为可以让一步,将进化论放在45亿年历史的背景下谈
还是不清楚为什么缺乏证据能推出宏进化不成立?只能说宏进化是悬而未决。1、前面#923楼刚讲过,missing link是科学界认为宏进化论必然发生的重要证据,是俺查证的第一个宏进化证据(因为这最容易入门),俺不会根据单独一个证据支持、反对一个学说
2、宏进化成立,需要一个巨大的证据链,这个链条任何一个环节断开了都不行。现在俺退一步,将这些链条分开谈,看看宏进化存在那些站得住脚的证据
3、不能证明missing link,当然不足以推翻宏进化;问题是,没有missing link,凭什么能证明宏进化必然成立--关于missing link,俺600多楼有很多东西,俺可以整理一下重新贴出来
4、宏进化论届并不认为missing link不可证明,尽管现在开始改口了。可是当前教科书中仍然坚持马的进化、始祖鸟等missing link的证据
这个能否科普一下。如果支持Yong Earth,整个进化论谈都不用谈,所以值得花点时间。
能不能一一解读一下为什么如果宏进化成立,你的那些问题就显然易见了?我怎么觉得哪个问题要是能解答了,都能当楼长?俺用“求科普”这个词,是因为那些问题都是最最基本的,如果科学发展到已经足以证明宏进化已经和正在发生,那些问题都是显然易见的,是真正科普水平的问题
俺是真正的科学盲,进楼之前对进化论几乎一无所知。当然对那些问题没有真正的答案,但是从俺这段时间的学习中,俺发现科学家对这些问题要不没有答案,要不争议极大。所以俺问这些问题的潜台词是:这些基本问题都不知道,科学家凭什么认定宏进化必然发生?
其中有一些也包含好奇的成分,比如究竟什么是DNA“解读器”?Craig Venter将不同生物用不同的方式解释DNA,让俺想起这个问题。就俺的理解(也是视频中Richard Darkins明确说的),科学家根据生物DNA相似性作为生物同源、相邻的判断依据,这个前提是“DNA解读器”是相同的,俺希望有好心人讲讲什么是DNA解读器
3、这些都饶过,就算它是长者“脚”的鱼,俺有更多的问题/求科普:
某些鱼在水里活得不耐烦了?象跳到岸上玩或者寻找食物,可是鱼的肺在陆地上不能呼吸,会死去啊!
或者在水里生活的某些鱼某一天基因变异长出两只脚,绝大多数鱼一辈子没有离开水面吧?它们有了脚之后怎么懂得爬上岸?它们是天才?在水里居然知道有一个陆地?还知道怎么上去?
有了脚还不行,至少还需要适合陆地上呼吸的肺吧?否则上岸不久它们就会死去。达尔文说适者生存,陆地上的空气可没有时间被它们适应,长者脚的鱼马上会死去的
那肯定是先长出肺来,可是没有脚怎么上岸?
同时长出肺和脚,那该行了吧?不过难度忒大了,肺和脚好像都不简单 :blowzy: 如果这样,就没有过渡,也不需要过渡了,这好像不符合进化论吧?
或者上面都不对,进化是慢慢的,一次变一点点,慢慢积累的。问题是刚开始变异的一点点没用啊,存在可以在陆地最长呼吸一分钟、两分钟、三分钟的肺吗?
最长在陆地上能呼吸一分钟的鱼干嘛要跑到陆地上,它们迟一点回到水里就会死的!
能在陆地呼吸一分钟的鱼,是不是在陆地上多锻炼它们在陆地的呼吸能力会越来越强?这种能力可以遗传给它们后代吗?人类可没有这种遗传能力
一直在水里生活的鱼跑到陆地上来,它们懂得怎样觅食吗?还是上来玩之后又回到水里了? 它们还听懂得享受生活的
还是不清楚为什么缺乏证据能推出宏进化不成立?只能说宏进化是悬而未决。
证明宏进化有两条路,一个是看过去历史留下的证据。一个是跟踪现有物种。如果历史上实在找不全证据。那只能用时间来证明,再过几千几万年,还看不到任何宏进化发生,那就有问题了。可惜我们估计是看不到了。
个人认为它跟宗教的最大不同就在这里,它始终是能用人的能力观察和验证的,只是时间问题。宗教完全无法证明或者伪证。
宏进化在教科书里怎么交,跟宏进化不成立完全是不同的问题。要分开讨论。
oh。这还用解释。。。马和驴杂交很容易生出骡子,但是骡子已经不能再生育了。狮虎兽很容易死。骡子和狮虎兽都算不上fertile offspring。
只是感觉前两天看的关于species的文章,还有点道理,挺好玩的。
进化论经不起科学的检验,宏进化是一门伪科学,或者保守地讲,宏进化仍然没有足够证据证明自己
披上科学外衣的政治,却通过公立学校的强制教育,去向无知的下一代推行伪科学,这才是危害所在