This source goes into more detail concerning the objections to the anthropomorphic nature of Shapiro;s conclusions, You will notice, like me, those who disagree with Shapiro DO NOT totally reject Shaipro;s work, but disagree with him on a similar basis as my conclusions. Note the author agrees with me and provides a positive not of agreement concerning Shairo's work.
It is not a war of controversial obejections among most scientists. There is often agreement and disagreement in dialogue over research and conclusions that will be wroked out through future research and discoveries.
Evolution: A View from the 21st Century
Evolution: A View from the 21st Century
Reviewed by
Adam S. Wilkins
Evolution: A View from the 21st Century by James A. Shapiro.
"My final disagreement with Jim's general argument concerns a truly fundamental point, however: the dismissal of natural selection as a shaping force in evolution. Thus, it is stated, at the very start of the book (top of p. 1): “Innovation, not selection, is the critical issue in evolutionary change. Without variation and novelty, selection has nothing to act upon.” Although all evolutionists would agree wholeheartedly with the second sentence, most would reject the first. The matter of selection is then virtually ignored until the final section of the book. There we read, as one of nine bullet points that summarize the core message: “The role of selection is to eliminate evolutionary novelties that prove to be non-functional and interfere with adaptive needs. Selection operates as
a purifying but not creative force [emphasis added].”
I cannot imagine many evolutionary biologists subscribing to that position. The objections to it come from both genetic arguments and paleontological data. Take the genetic considerations first. In microbes, the number of steps between a genetic change and its phenotypic consequences is usually small, often being simply the function of an altered encoded protein. One might say that, in general, within prokaryotes, the “genotype–phenotype distance” is short. The consequence is a fairly direct and predictable biological consequence, whose selective consequences (favorable or unfavorable) are often easy to predict. In contrast, in complex multicellular organisms, the genotype–phenotype distance is large, the effects of most genetic changes being transmitted through complex genetic networks and cellular changes. These, which can be diagrammed as a linear sequence (though often embedded within larger branching networks), constitute a large sequence of steps, one that eventuates in morphological change. Furthermore, the genetic change often has pleiotropic consequences. The net result of all these complexities is that the biological consequences of a genetic (or stable epigenetic) change are often both indirect and mixed. In such situations, there will be trade-offs between biological fitness gains and losses for each resultant change. Natural selection must comprise an important part of the process that either filters out or amplifies the effect of most such changes.
The arguments from paleontological evidence for the importance of natural selection largely concern the observed long-term trends of morphological change, which are visible in many lineages. It is hard to imagine what else but natural selection could be responsible for such trends, unless one invokes supernatural or mystical forces such as the long popular but ultimately discredited force of “orthogenesis.” For a detailed consideration of these cases and the role of natural selection in shaping morphologies of organisms over long time spans, there is no better general treatment than the classic book of
Simpson (1971).
Finally, with respect to this issue of selection, one might add that, in terms of Jim's particular thesis, it is hard to understand how cells could have the very capacities for natural genetic engineering attributed to them without those capacities having been evolved, in some manner and over long evolutionary spans, by natural selection. The evolution of such capabilities, favoring the process of evolvability (the capacity to give rise to new properties), is a fascinating subject, though mentioned explicitly only once in the book, and deserves more attention than it has traditionally received. Again, the only alternative for the origination of these capabilities, if one discards natural selection as the generative agent, is some supranatural force, a position that I am certain is not being advocated here.
On the other hand, perhaps, the rejection of the creative role of natural selection in transforming populations is not as complete as the earlier statements suggest. The next to last bullet point, in the summation of conclusions (p. 144), states: “Successful evolutionary inventions are subject to amplification, reuse, and adaptation to new functions in response to successive ecological changes.” To me, that reads like a classic statement for the role of directional selection in promoting evolutionary change via the transformation of the genetic structure of a population. Certainly, the spread of antibiotic resistance, discussed at length in the book, would appear to be an archetypal instance of natural selection—albeit one based on a highly nonclassical form of genetic variation—as, indeed, it is so regarded by most biologists.
Yet, the book's contention that natural selection's importance for evolution has been hugely overstated represents a point of view that has a growing set of adherents. (A few months ago, I was amazed to hear it expressed, in the strongest terms, from another highly eminent microbiologist.) My impression is that evolutionary biology is increasingly separating into two camps, divided over just this question. On the one hand are the population geneticists and evolutionary biologists who continue to believe that selection has a “creative” and crucial role in evolution, and on the other, there is a growing body of scientists (largely those who have come into evolution from molecular biology, developmental biology or developmental genetics, and microbiology) who reject it. In contrast to Victorian scientists who regarded Darwinian natural selection as “incapable” of creating high degrees of biological complexity, the modern sceptics tend to regard it as of “trivial” importance: the “right” variant for the right place and time arises and, presto, the population changes! The two contemporary groups, divided over this point, are not so much talking past each another as ignoring one another. This cannot be a constructive situation though whether it has the makings of a full-fledged Kuhnian paradigm crisis is too soon to tell.
Let me end on a positive note. Jim Shapiro has made a well-documented case against the sufficiency of random mutations (arising irrespective of potential need) as the source material for genetic variation and has discussed a wide variety of mechanisms by means of which, in some degree, genetic change is evoked in direct response to environmental challenge. There is a plethora of information that he marshals, both within the printed book and in the online material and these specific findings and the general phenomenon they illustrate deserve far more attention from evolutionary biologists than they have so far received. A particular challenge now is to find out how much evolutionarily significant genetic change is evoked in response to specific environmental changes and what kinds of change they comprise."
There are many more after this . . .
Yes some of the natural processes in Shapiros It is abundantly clear that you are latching on to Shapiro's anthropomorphic language to justify Intelligent design, but not many scientists consider it a natural process of significance in evolution.
