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There is no such thing as a "stable state of organism" in this context. Remove all your goalposts because they are confusing you. Evolution is a continuum.

by splawn 12y ago

nyrulez 12y ago
Then what is evolution trying to explain ? I thought it was explaining how primates evolved to humans, not just micro evolution at the DNA level ? For all practical purposes these are considered stable states in that they are different enough (visually, internally, intellectually) so as not to be considered continuous i.e. just differing by some epsilon. Are you saying evolution does not claim to answer this and this is a question not worth asking? I have a feeling the gist of what I am asking is clear enough but we are getting lost in words. I just asked for a link on Amazon that talks about testing/simulating/demonstrating evolution for snapshots enough far apart in time where we would say yes these organisms are pretty different, something like the snapshots demonstrated here: http://www.bot1320.nicerweb.com/Locked/media/ch11/taxonomy.html http://www.bot1320.nicerweb.com/Locked/media/ch11/taxonomy.h...
- simplexion 12y ago
  Are you just asking about macroevolution? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macroevolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macroevolution
- splawn 12y ago
  "micro evolution" You are being confused by terms that were invented by a group of people (Discovery Institute) that deny evolution because of their religion not because of lack of evidence. The snapshot evidence you need is found in the genome (genomes that developed over billions of years of "micro evolution") of every organism on the planet not just primates. You can't just ignore that and ask why we can't observe lizards turning into birds overnight. Edit: I wasn't aware of this until now. We actually have observed one species ("species" being defined as scott_s mentioned up-thread) evolve into another. http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/science-sushi/2011/12/18/evolution-watching-speciation-occur-observations/ http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/science-sushi/2011/12/18...
- Fomite 12y ago
  One of several problems is that for many of the organisms with a short enough generation time to run an experiment like this (see Lenski's experiments with E. coli: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._coli_long-term_evolution_experiment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._coli_long-term_evolution_exp... ) the notion of a "steady state species" in terms of your thinking (Baboon vs. Human vs. Gorilla) is entirely false.

There is no such thing as a "stable state of organism" in this context. Remove all your goalposts because they are confusing you. Evolution is a continuum.

by splawn 12y ago

There is no such thing as a "stable state of organism" in this context. Remove all your goalposts because they are confusing you. Evolution is a continuum.

nyrulez 12y ago

Then what is evolution trying to explain ? I thought it was explaining how primates evolved to humans, not just micro evolution at the DNA level ? For all practical purposes these are considered stable states in that they are different enough (visually, internally, intellectually) so as not to be considered continuous i.e. just differing by some epsilon. Are you saying evolution does not claim to answer this and this is a question not worth asking? I have a feeling the gist of what I am asking is clear enough but we are getting lost in words. I just asked for a link on Amazon that talks about testing/simulating/demonstrating evolution for snapshots enough far apart in time where we would say yes these organisms are pretty different, something like the snapshots demonstrated here: http://www.bot1320.nicerweb.com/Locked/media/ch11/taxonomy.html http://www.bot1320.nicerweb.com/Locked/media/ch11/taxonomy.h...

simplexion 12y ago
Are you just asking about macroevolution? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macroevolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macroevolution
splawn 12y ago
"micro evolution" You are being confused by terms that were invented by a group of people (Discovery Institute) that deny evolution because of their religion not because of lack of evidence. The snapshot evidence you need is found in the genome (genomes that developed over billions of years of "micro evolution") of every organism on the planet not just primates. You can't just ignore that and ask why we can't observe lizards turning into birds overnight. Edit: I wasn't aware of this until now. We actually have observed one species ("species" being defined as scott_s mentioned up-thread) evolve into another. http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/science-sushi/2011/12/18/evolution-watching-speciation-occur-observations/ http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/science-sushi/2011/12/18...
Fomite 12y ago
One of several problems is that for many of the organisms with a short enough generation time to run an experiment like this (see Lenski's experiments with E. coli: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._coli_long-term_evolution_experiment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._coli_long-term_evolution_exp... ) the notion of a "steady state species" in terms of your thinking (Baboon vs. Human vs. Gorilla) is entirely false.