BobRyan said:
Is this the part where you DO remember what Patterson said in BOTH letters or you don't??
<snipped repeated arguments concerning Dr Patterson's two letters and attributed remarks at the AMNH including a complaint that Dr Patterson's letter to Louis Theunissen had not been fully quoted by myself>
It is clear that even a middle ground is unlikely to be arrived at between us. It also appears that, as elsewhere, I have failed to make my arguments entirely clear to you, for which the fault must be my own. As far as Dr Patterson's remarks, confirmed or otherwise are concerned, this may end up being my last post on the subject, especially as I see that others are comprehensively and effectively demonstrating the paucity of your claims on this topic more capably than I am.
Your focus on the text, the whole text and nothing but the text is significant. Dr Patterson's work and views are not encompassed by but two letters and one speech, accurately reported or not. The letter to Louis Theunissen is quoted in full below, except for the address and salutation:
Sorry to have taken so long to answer your letter of July 9th. I was away for a while, and then infernally busy. I seem fated continually to make a fool of myself with creationists. The specific quote you mention, from a letter to Sunderland dated 10th April 1979, is accurate as far as it goes. The passage quoted continues "... a watertight argument. The reason is that statements about ancestry and descent are not applicable in the fossil record. Is Archaeopteryx the ancestor of all birds? Perhaps yes, perhaps no: there is no way of answering the question. It is easy enough to make up stories of how one form gave rise to another, and to find reasons why the stages should be favoured by natural selection. But such stories are not part of science, for there is no way to put them to the test."
I think the continuation of the passage shows clearly that your interpretation (at the end of your letter) is correct, and the creationists' is false.
That brush with Sunderland (I had never heard of him before) was my first experience of creationists. The famous "keynote address" at the American Museum of Natural History in 1981 was nothing of the sort. It was a talk to the "Systematics Discussion Group" in the Museum, an (extremely) informal group. I had been asked to talk to them on "Evolutionism and creationism"; fired up by a paper by Ernst Mayr published in Science just the week before. I gave a fairly rumbustious talk, arguing that the theory of evolution had done more harm than good to biological systematics (classification). Unknown to me, there was a creationist in the audience with a hidden tape recorder. So much the worse for me. But my talk was addressed to professional systematists, and concerned systematics, nothing else.
I hope that by now I have learned to be more circumspect in dealing with creationists, cryptic or overt. But I still maintain that scepticism is the scientist's duty, however much the stance may expose us to ridicule.
If you interpret this letter to mean anything other than that, as far as the fossil record was concerned, Dr Patterson's argument was that it was not possible to unequivocally identify specific fossil species as directly ancestral to extant species, then your comprehension of written English is different from mine. How you interpret this as wholly undermining evolutionary theory, I have no idea. And this is why the context of Dr Patterson's work and understanding
beyond two letters is significant and relevant. You are taking Dr Patterson's remarks out of this context, as well as ignoring his specific point that what he was referring to by the phrase 'It is easy enough to make up stories of how one form gave rise to another' was the impossibility, at that time, of making 'a watertight argument' regarding the direct ancestral relationship between particular fossils and extant species, the reason being 'that statements about ancestry and descent are not applicable in the fossil record'. Strangely enough, this does not shake evolutionary theory to the core.
If Dr Patterson was content with Mr Sunderland's interpretation of his letter to him, apparently centred on these sentences
I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them. . .I will lay it on the line, There is not one such fossil for which one might make a watertight argument.
why would he state quite unequivocally to Mr Theunissen that 'I think the continuation of the passage shows clearly that your interpretation (at the end of your letter) is correct, and the creationists' is false'? You prefer to focus on those aspects of Dr Patterson's letters that seem to support your argument, gloss over anything in those letters that perhaps qualifies that support and ignore completely what Dr Patterson has said and written elsewhere that would convince any reasonable person that he was entirely persuaded of the evidence supporting evolutionary theory.
If anything else was the case, why would Dr Patterson feel compelled to conclude his letter to Mr Theunissen with the remark 'I hope that by now I have learned to be more circumspect in dealing with creationists'?
As far as Dr Patterson's remarks at the AMNH on 5 November 1981 are concerned, Dr Patterson has indicated that the transcript circulated by the creationist taper is heavily flawed
....saying that the talk was only about details within his narrow specialty, cladistics. He had spoken loosely, and thrown out rhetorical questions, since he thought that everyone in his audience was an expert. He had just read a scathing attack on cladistics, and was pretty heated up. He was not talking from notes, and did not try to create a correct transcript.
When asked for a summary, he said that he was talking about the two schools of thought among cladistics experts. One school took evolution as a given. Therefore when they drew a diagram showing the relatedness of various species, they were explicitly drawing a family tree that showed descent. The other school - Patterson's - tried to construct diagrams showing only the logical relatedness of species, strictly based on similarities and differences. That is, his diagrams did not use evolution as an assumption. He was arguing that this is important, because it is a fallacy to use one of your assumptions as one of your conclusions. Since his school did not use evolution as an assumption, they were free to use it as a conclusion.
Patterson said he was not expressing doubt that evolution had happened, and he felt that his "cladograms" were evidence for evolution.
From:
http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/creation/quote_patterson.html
I don't know how this can be said more emphatically, but again it is clear that Dr Patterson had no truck with the idea that his remarks invalidated evolutionary theory whatsoever. To continue using them as if they did seems to me disingenuous.
Bob said
....
Again you provide an answer in the form of "no quotes from either Eldredge or Patterson" regarding the point/incident under discussion. Just more accusation without evidence.
My point concerns nothing that these gentlemen said or wrote, but rather is directed towards the problem which you believe exists as a result of those attributed words that you focus so intently upon. In other words, neither Dr Patterson's remarks nor Niles Eldredge's 'lament' are evidence in and of themselves of anything other than opinion. Evolutionary theory is supported by much more evidence than that which is present in the fossil record. Even if no fossil remains existed whatsoever, evolutionary theory would still be persuasive on the basis of evidence from, amongst other things, phylogenetics, molecular evolution and population genetics.
[quote:c9fbb]L.K.
7. Regardless of anything else, do you think that understanding of evolutionary theory may have progressed at all in the decades since Dr Patterson's spoken and written remarks? I am thinking particularly of research in molecular biology, molecular genetics, phylogenetics and population genetics, but please feel free to include other fields in your answer.
Bob asks
Is it your argument that Patterson was correct in making these frank statements about the flaws in atheist darwinism that existed during his life time -- but since his death in 1999 "Darwinism changed" ?
you seem to "hope" that although Patterson reveals flaws in the Darwinist argument -- yet since that time those flaws have been addressed.[/quote:c9fbb]
My question makes no reference to the 'rightness' or otherwise of Dr Patterson's statements. Nor does it express any 'hopes' that the 'flaws' Dr Patterson identified (whether understood correctly by yourself or not) have or have not been 'addressed' since his untimely death. It asks whether you think it possible that understanding of evolutionary may have progressed at all since his spoken and written remarks. The attempt to reduce the period to which I am referring is duly noted.
Your question is "DO I think that SCIENCE has since SOLVED the problem" of looking at a fossil and NOT KNOWING what it is ancestor TO or descendant OF.
No, it isn't. Please see above.
No - since 1999 I have not heard of any "breakthrough" that solves that problem. NO announcement "WE have finally figured out how to do that".
1999 is not the date in question here. Neither is your answer to the question, which if you read it again carefully you will see it is not directed at the fossil record. If it had been directed at the fossil record, tiktaalik would no doubt have been a useful place to start.
But given Patterson's recognition of the LIMIT I have no doubt that should they HAVE found a way to SOLVE it -- a lot of hoopla would surely have resulted.
This is because you assume that your conclusions based on Dr Patterson's two letters and one misreported talk are a correct summation of the problem that they pose to evolutionary theory. Is any problem at all other than the one that you conjure forth? If your summation of the problem is in fact erroneous and the problem does not in fact exist beyond your own hopes that it does, then we would expect scientists to devote no effort at all to 'solving' it, which appears to be the case. I would be most interested in any citations or references you can provide to any scientific papers, articles or books dealing with evolutionary theory that agree with your summation of the seriousness of the problem and then try to address it.
no let me ask you a question --
IF the PROBLEM REMAINS -- does THAT change your faith in darwinist orthodoxy one iota?
1. I do not have 'faith' in evolutionary theory. I am persuaded by what I have read that the weight of evidence accumulated since Charles Darwin originally proposed the theory overwhelmingly supports it.
2. Even if your analysis of the problem is wholly correct, the problem relates only to the fossil record. There are many other evidential legs that support evolutionary theory. Therefore my answer to your rather tendentiously phrased question would be a quite resounding 'No'.
[quote:c9fbb]L.K By the way, I assume that you have no answers to my questions (4)-(6).
It is more the case that I have about 20 threads active on this board -- and while I do try to get to yours first - as I find you to be a more objective thoughtful participant than most of the regular darwin supporting group - I am also prone to missing a thread topic.
In fact it is thanks to VZ4M commenting here and bumping this up to the top that I got to this. I was not aware that you had posted a response here until then.[/quote:c9fbb]
My apologies, I understand and appreciate the demands on your time. It was just that you jumped from responding to my first three questions to addressing my seventh. I just assumed (falsely and perhaps unreasonably) that this meant you had considered the others and had no reply. I will understand if, as the discussion has now moved on, you prefer to leave them hanging.
