Meyer has
long been aware of strong reasons for doubting that mutation and selection can add enough new information of the right kind of account for large-scale, or “macroevolutionary,” innovations – the various information revolutions that have occurred after the origin of life.
all emphasis in original
So, here’s an excellent starting point for an actual science discussion. Indeed, that almost sounds like a testable hypothesis… except for the problem of actually measuring information content in biological systems.
But it’s a decent start. What we need is some kind of way to measure the information content of biological systems (including ‘function’ that Meyer has mentioned previous… we probably also need an environmental component (epigentics and adaptation)… and a bunch of other things) and then we need some values which would indicate that “macroevolutionary” change.
I put the word in quotes for two reasons. First, Meyer himself uses it and second… I don’t. I don’t think that macroevolution and microevolution are real concepts. They, like species names, are artificial constructs. At what point does a microevolutionary change become a macroevolutionary change? Answer… history will tell us.
I’ve used this example before and I will continue to. Let’s look at dogs. Take a random representative of all the breeds of dogs. Now, look at the great Dane and the teacup Chihuahua. I think it’s obvious that these two dogs cannot breed together (one of the definitions of species). A Dane pup, when born, weighs more than a teacup Chihuahua as an adult. And, without some significant help, I doubt that a male Chihuahua could even catch the attention of, much less successfully mate with a female great Dane. The other option… well, let’s not think about that.
Looking at only those two dogs, I think it reasonable to say that they are different species (using the Biological Species Concept). But so are all the other hundred or so breeds of dogs.
Now, your challenge is to draw a line. Draw a line somewhere within all the breeds of dogs so that those one each side of the line can’t interbreed.
It can’t be done. Because Chihuahua can breed with other small (but larger dogs) and those could breed with still larger dogs and those with still larger dogs and on and on until you get to a Dane. Any arbitrary line would be between two dog breeds that can interbreed. And yet, it is still most likely that a Chihuahua and a Dane cannot.
It’s a non-issue for evolution. Indeed, it’s what is expected from evolutionary principles. Ah ha, I hear… they are still dogs. Yes, they are. And that’s the point.
We can’t tell the difference between dogs and not dogs. Is a wolf a not-dog? Is a coyote? Is a fox? We draw arbitrary lines all the time in a game called taxonomy. But that’s not the way the world really works.
There are populations and some on the fringes of these populations are so radically different from each other that they might as well be different species. But, because they are in a population with intermediates, then we can reasonably say they are the same species. Except that they couldn’t interbreed.
Now, let’s bring in another dog. A dog from 35,000 years ago, when humans and the first protodogs began to interact. Could that protodog interbreed with a modern dog?
No one knows. Could the common ancestor of all carnivores and a modern dog interbreed? No way. Not going to happen.
So we could draw an imaginary line somewhere between modern dogs and the last common ancestor of all carnivores (about 42 million years ago). But any line you drew would still be between two animals, that probably could still interbreed.
What we think of ‘macroevolution’ is just tiny changes over a long time period, where we don’t have all the intermediates yet (and never will).
So, not only can Meyer not draw a line and say “this is a macroevolutionary change and everything else isn’t”, it can’t be done, even in principle. Because biology doesn’t work that way. I’m different from my mom and dad, but I’m not that different. And they weren’t that different from their grandparents. But if you go back in time just a couple of million years, you will start realizing that now, things have changed a lot since me.
So, while Meyer almost has a testable hypothesis, he needs to do a lot of work to get it actually testable and justify all the decisions he makes to get it testable (like, where to draw that line). Then he has to be able to actually calculate the information he doubts can make that change. Then we have to be able to see if he’s right.
Which, is what makes this untestable. We can’t just look at modern species as say, “nope, no way to have a cat evolve into a sealion. Won’t happen. Done. ” We would, instead have to go back to the last common ancestor and determine all the tiny changes that happened over a few tens of millions of years… and that’s impossible.
So Meyer makes a fundamental mistake in how evolution works and what it predicts here. He attacks this saying ‘evolution can’t do it’. But he offers nothing in return. Not even something that testable to figure out if it’s possible or not.
But evolution does have a mechanism for this change… time and selection and mutation and gene flow and all the other known mechanisms of evolutionary theory. And all those things together can result in massive changes… as can be seen in the real world today and the historical world as well.
