Mathematician said:
Kit fox, gray fox, coyote, and bobcat. The collected observations of 40+ predator hunters over nearly 50 years. Convergence of traits is what is observed. Just as was predicted in the mathematical model. Ecology predicts divergence and specialization. Nonlinear stochastic gradient descent predicts convergence to a suboptimum. Convergence is what is seen in the desert.
I have no plans to do the same sort of research elsewhere. It won't improve my ability to find foxes, coyotes, and bobcats in the desert.
Have you read The Beak of the Finch, by Jonathan Weiner, or even better the papers produced by the Grants and their team?
Weiner describes an experiment based on the same theory that "nonlinear stochastic gradient descent predicts convergence to a suboptimum." As you no doubt know, the Galapagos ground finches exist in three distinct size groups. And they are capable of mating and producing viable hybrids. It looks like an ideal situation for convergence. But when the researcher applied the mathematical model to the data that had been gathered, instead of getting a single convergent, sub-optimal fitness peak, he got three different fitness peaks corresponding to the three different-sized species.
Obviously you have had the opposite experience in your research.
gluadys said:
However, the analogy doesn't really work when you begin looking at the details. In our experience, only living things that reproduce generate a nested hierarchy. Automobiles and other human manufactured things don't. So a natural question to be posed of any design theory is why the designer chose to introduce all new species as part of a nested hierarchy instead of more along the module-swapping style of human designs. Especially when it would appear unintelligent not to use module swapping rather than remaining within the confines of an established pattern. One also wonders why a designer would continue to use inefficient and defective design if it were possible to do otherwise.
Automobiles produce a nested hierarchy. We can catagorize first by brand then use (the way manufacturers do). Or
another nested hierarchy of use then brand (the way buyers probably should). Nature exhibits the same multi-nesting.
Ah, this is just the point. Depending on your starting point with automobiles, you will get
different nested hierarchies. Also the categories you mentioned should not be used at all, as they are not part of the morphology of the automobile. If you want to compare the classification of automobiles to that of species, you need to use such characteristics as basic form (4-door, coupe, hatchback, station wagon, SUV), front-wheel as opposed to rear-wheel or all-wheel drive, presence or absence of anti-lock braking systems, fuel injection systems, air bags, stick-shift vs steering wheel mount of gear shift, standard vs. automatic shifting, etc. I very much doubt you will get a nested hierarchy using the actual morphology of automobiles. I am certain you will not get the same nested hierarchy from different starting points.
And that is just what you DO get in biology. Start with morphology and whether you start with vertebrates, plants or yeast you end up not only with a nested hierarchy each time--you end up with the
same nested hierarchy. Going genetic, and whether you study the cytochrome c protein, the hemoglobin family or endogenous retroviral insertions you also get not only a nested hierarchy, but the
same nested hierarchy. Furthermore the morphological and the genetic nested hierarchy match each other, so we now have a
twin-nested hierarchy.
This is what one expects and predicts if species share common ancestors from whom they have inherited their characteristics with modification. Reproduction can produce only a nested hierarchy of this sort.
But nothing other than reproduction is known produce this sort of nested hierarchy.
I don't follow the portion in the middle of your paragraph.
What inefficient design? What defective design?
For inefficient design, try the recurrent laryngeal nerve in all terrestrial vertebrates (especially the giraffe). Ever since necks evolved, efficient design would seem to dictate re-routing the nerve so that it does not have to double back on itself on its way from throat to brain. Yet it still uses a pathway that while efficient in fish, is not efficient in the terrestrial descendants of fish.
For defective design consider the GLO gene that in most mammals directs the formation of Vitamin C. In humans and their nearest relatives a defect has disabled the functioning of this gene. So we cannot manufacture Vitamin C. We have to get it from our food.
Not only is this defect found in the specific group most closely related to humans, it is the same defect in all these species. This makes absolute sense if it has been inherited from a common ancestor. It makes no sense if any of these species was created separately from the others. Why create the gene at all if it is not created to function? And even if it is created not to function, why disable it in precisely the same way, so that it appears to indicate a relationship of common ancestry?
These things---and there are hundreds of similar examples---do not suggest design, especially not intelligent design.
