Musing About Evolution and the ID Criticism

I’m kind an outsider on the Evolution ID debate and don’t follow it closely, because I don’t think evolution is anywhere near as important a science/issue as it is made out to be, e.g., it is not a cornerstone by or lens through which the how’s and why’s of biological data need to be seen. From my point of view (and a view oddly enough shared by at least one NOVA program) is that the ID critique of the evolutionary model proposed by the genetic error/adaptive selection model is one of time. The ID critique from that point of view is that the changes seen should take longer than they have absent other mechanisms. The standard GE/AS models have no substantial riposte to that because neither side has a predictive methodology. Questions like: Given an isolated flightless population what is the expectation value for the duration you’d have to wait before flight would be developed by that population? Or, Given a isolated population with no light, what are the expectaion values for the time for loss of all sight organs and functions? Or Given a isolated population with an excess of right handed sugars, what is the time to develop digestion of the same? Neither ID nor GE/AS has any clue/method for calculating an answer to that. 

In that mode, it seems that an interesting tack for experimentation on that would be to develop data points. Stress populations and figure out how long it would take the population to develop a response. That is develop data points and methods to begin building a heuristic model to answer the above questions. It seems to me that small table top populations of organisms could be created which in the main have very fast generational times and consequently the possibilities for adapative responses. This could in turn give some data points for developing descriptive formula for which a theory which describes them might be hung.

Filed under: Evolution • Mark O. • Science

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