A Mathematician's View of Evolution

The Mathematical Intelligencer ^ | Granville Sewell

[Lucky Dog]

"The author of this piece is an idiot, with a diploma from a degree mill, who is such a fool, he probably couldn't even get a job teaching at Bob Jones."

Let's cut that avenue of the critics' attack early:

Granville Sewell completed his PhD at Purdue University. He has subsequently been employed by (in chronological order) Universidad Simon Bolivar (Caracas), Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Purdue University, IMSL (Houston), The University of Texas Center for High Performance Computing (Austin), and the University of Texas El Paso; he spent Fall 1999 at Universidad Nacional de Tucuman in Argentina on a Fulbright grant. He has written three books on numerical analysis.

[ryan71]

And if early humans evolved from apes, why are there still apes? Why did they not evolve even slightly over the millions of years it supposedly took humans to evolve?

[js1138]

Only you and Dembski, if you aren't the same person. And if you aren't Dembski, then you are a plagiarist.

[MineralMan]

I'm wondering why this six-year-old publication is in News/Activism. It's not news. I'm betting it should have been put in General/Chat.

[Alter Kaker]

Okay, then why did humans continue to evolve if there was no impetus to do so?.......

Humans continue to evolve and cockroaches continue to evolve. As long as allele frequencies change, evolution is taking place. There are a number of factors currently driving evolution in both humans and cockroaches: DNA mutation, the fact that not all individuals reproduce succesfully (aka natural selection), gene flow, and genetic drift.

[js1138]

But it's only teleological in the Pee-wee Herman sense: "I meant to do that!"

Dembski is definitely the Pee-Wee Herman of mathematics. It's fun to watch his web site, wondering what Nigerian email scam he'll fall for next.

[stultorum]

The article makes a lot of sense.

Thank you for posting it.

[Red Badger]

Man cannot outrun a wolf, but used his brain to devise methods to counteract the danger of the wolf or other creatures. A deer of comparable mental ability could do so as well. As little as 50k years ago, a mere eyeblink of geologic time, there were giant deer, sloths, sabertoothed this and that, even sabertoothed kangaroos, but they are all gone. Did their niches change? Or did man upset the evolutionary processes by his mere existence?..............

[ZeitgeistSurfer]

Just curious. As far as you know, is there a compelling mathematical argument in support of macro-evolution? Does it involve the theory of computability, complexity theory, etc.?

[Alter Kaker]

And if early humans evolved from apes, why are there still apes?

If the United States is descended from England (via the colonies) then why does England still exist?

Why did they not evolve even slightly over the millions of years it supposedly took humans to evolve?

Not only have apes evolved, they have evolved at least as much as humans have evolved.

[FreedomProtector]

The mathematical improbability of arriving at life (and a world so perfectly suited for life) as we observe it today solely by chance and natural processes even given any ridiculous amount of time suggested so far is incredibly very low--essentially null.

....a central point in the creation/design vs. world arriving by chance debate/discussion

article/thread well suited for mass ping :)

[sittnick]

Okay, then why did humans continue to evolve if there was no impetus to do so?.......

Evolutionists would say that there WAS one or more (changing weather, changing food sources, new predators to outflank, etc.) For the record, I am on your side, I believe Darwinian macro-evolution to be ridiculous. I was just pointing out that this particular argument is easily dealt with by them.

It's easy to postulate things happening in prehistoric times, because, as Chesterton points out, it's prehistoric. We really don't know what happened. The scientifically honest approach would be to say that we DON'T know where everything came from (from a scientific point of view) and leave it at that. The whole question does not lend itself to study by the scientific method. There are limitations to what scientific method can reveal or prove.

[taxesareforever]

"When you look for links between major groups of animals, they simply aren't there...'Instead of finding the gradual unfolding of life', writes David M. Raup, a curator of Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History, '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 fossil sequence very suddenly, show little or no change during their existence, then abruptly disappear.

Is this supposed to surprise creos? No, but I bet the evos go into attack mode.

[DManA]

Don't really have a dog in this fight but one thing that bothers me about evolution - evolution operates on years to million years time frames but survival is a second by second proposition. I can't quite reconcile the different time scales.

[MineralMan]

"And if early humans evolved from apes, why are there still apes? Why did they not evolve even slightly over the millions of years it supposedly took humans to evolve? "

A news species that evolves does not mean that other species cease to exist. It is not a zero-sum game. In reality, today's apes and humans have evolved to the state they are in from a common ancestor species.

The apes evolved in one direction, and humans evolved in another. We did not evolve from any existing ape species. We are on separate evolutionary tracks, although we come from a common prior species.

By many definitions, human beings are just another ape, anyhow. Chimps, Gorillas, Humans, Orangutans...we're all in the same family. We do different things, and are adapted for a different environment. Otherwise, we're all pretty darned similar, as a trip to any primate house in any zoo will demonstrate rather quickly.

We're not better than the other apes...just different.

[sittnick]

Humans continue to evolve and cockroaches continue to evolve.

Says who? The Darwinian approach does not require further evolution. How do you define evolution? Are you saying that a revived 50,000 year old cockroach would not be able to mate and produce fertile offspring with present day cockroach? Do you consider minor variations within a species evolution?

[MineralMan]

"evolution operates on years to million years time frames but survival is a second by second proposition. I can't quite reconcile the different time scales.
"

Evolution is not a matter of individual animals, but species. If one monkey dies, it does not affect evolution. The species continues and reproduces.

Evolution does not address the survival of individual critters, just species.

[Szent_Adam_Kiraly]

"If evolution is an ongoing process, and all living things start at the same point, then by now there should be not only sentient humans, but fish, birds and reptiles, etc. Why would just one of the myriad species evolve to a superior position, and not the others......"

I will try to explain the conventional knowlege through a hypothetical.

If you take 1 species (Population A) and put half of that species in a different environment (with a lot of time) the population in a new environment (population B) will either die out or change. If this change is to such a degree that population A can not make viable offspring with population B, you now have two different species.


The two primary conditions are isolation between the populations, and a different environment for each population. Both of which occur on earth.

[sittnick]

We're not better than the other apes...just different.

Be careful, or the animal rights people will want to give them representation!

[Alter Kaker]

Man cannot outrun a wolf, but used his brain to devise methods to counteract the danger of the wolf or other creatures.

Intelligence works in some places, speed works in others, and strength in yet others. Species have evolved to find a happy medium between the three that yields optimum survival for them.

Did their niches change? Or did man upset the evolutionary processes by his mere existence?..............

Yes to both. Hunman evolution has upset many niches, although the same is true for the evolution of other predators. Species either evolve to find new niches or they go extinct. I think humans are somewhat unusual because they have had unique evolutionary pressures over the last few hundred thousand years pushing ever-greater intelligence. But there are costs and limites to increased human intelligence as well -- brain size is limited by the width of the female pelvis. If the brain is too large, humans can't be born vaginally. If female pelvises were wider, women wouldn't be able to walk bipedally.