This is all very well but we stopped believing in little men inside our TVs to make them work, when we turned five. Do they think there are the equivalent of little thinking agents “carpenters or electricians or plumbers” hiding inside our cells. Is there a blue print? Is it still thought to reside in the DNA or is there another heritable component that we need to discover?

Is it all in the Junk DNA?

Do the genes first make the “dumb” plumber machine that then reads the plumbing instructions and carries them out in programmed cooperation with the “dumb” electrician and “dumb” carpenter machines? Does this senario not cry out even louder for an intelligent architect?

There is room for a revolution in thought here.

What the common man means by inherited, and what we have been led to believe, is that what we are born as, is written in our DNA. Is this not true?

My female relatives have a presumably genetic defect that leads to a misshapen left little toe nail. This has been the phenotype for 4 generations. How can this be explained separate from their genes?

How can he be so confident that “there cannot possibly be genes or processes specifically for hands, brains or beaks.”

I would say the opposite. There must be genes or at least higher order organising control programs for hands etc. Don’t HOX genes work by causing these subroutines to repeat?

He’s probably right that coding genes aren’t responsible for many things. I doubt coding genes are responsible for instinctual behaviors, for instance, but instinctive behaviors are nonetheless heritable and are specified by *something* in the germ cells. -ds

Tetradactyly is the condition of having four digits on a limb, as in amphibians and many birds. The hind limbs of dogs and cats also have only four digits.

Tridactyly is the condition of having three digits on a limb, as in the Rhinoceros and ancestors of the horse such as Protohippus and Hipparion. These belong to the ‘Perissodactyla’. Some birds also have three toes.

Bidactyly or didactyly is the condition of having two digits on each limb, as in the Two-toed Sloth, Choloepus didactylus. In humans this name is used for an abnormality in which the middle digits are missing, leaving only the thumb and fifth finger. Cloven-hoofed mammals (such as deer, sheep and cattle – ‘Artiodactyla’) walk on two digits.

Monodactyly is the condition of having a single digit on a limb, as in modern horses. These belong to the ‘Perissodactyla’.

???

Pentadactilism is universal because, only because, nature is determined to follow the design laid out for it. Convergence is so universal because, and only because nature is determined to follow the design laid out for it. Animals have this incredible ability to dynamically adapt to change, such as a different sized limb because they were masterfully designed. Lego was masterfully designed.

Regarding “facilitate variation”, this idea can be broken down more explicitly.

First, to what degree is the shape of diversity shaped by the distribution of phenotypes that arise out of random mutation ? This distribution is certainly important since something that is more likely to occur via mutation, and has equal selective advantage relative to another mutation, would be expected to be more likely to fix. The fact that the probability distribution of available phenotypes plays a role in shaping diversity seems trivial.

However, to what degree is the shape of this distribution “selectable” ? I am not sure if Kirschner is arguing that this distribution has been directly selected on over evolutionary time, rather than indirectly selected. It seems that he may be saying this distribution is itself a target of natural selection, but that is unclear to me. Nonetheless, whether the shape of this distribution has been selected for or not, he is arguing that it is important in understanding how evolution has occured.

Re: 7. Facilitators are not in the same camp as designers in the sense of ID. Waves facilitate breaking rocks on the shore.

The semantic games that chance worshippers play to avoid loaded terms connotating design never cease to amuse me. Of course they’re never quite successful at it because any thinking person can’t help but know that where there are machines there are machinists, where there are codes there are coders, and where there is facilitation there are facilitators.

Facilitated variation could achieve these ends by a mechanism that imposes constraints so that mutations which lead to lego bricks are more likely than mutations that lead to meaningless goo. I am no geneticist, but it is striking how mutuations can lead to developments such an additional arm which are constructing a meaningful unit of function (even if it is not appropriate in this case).

Re #4. I think there are two uses of the words “random” here. Random meaning “all mutations are equally likely” and random meaning “not directed towards an end”. I am guessing that Kirshner is saying the first is not true but the second holds.

They talk about things like ‘evolutionary novelty’, ‘coordination of development, and ‘exploratory behavior’ during embryonic development. These mechanisms are supposed to differ from intelligent design in that they are modifications done ‘on the fly’, and thus more flexible than a rigid pre-designed structure.

But wait! A possible purport of this theory is that it negates the need for a designer. I see it as similar to NS/RM, but supposedly consisting of a ‘smarter’ evolutionary process. But does it/can it really fulfill the evolutionist’s dream? If it does, it may in fact be the answer to Darwin’s dilemma.

I just called around and found a copy of the book at Border’s in Tempe AZ, and I’ll pick it up this afternoon. After reading it, I may have a further comment.

This article by Daniel Hartl (12/05 Harvard Magazine) also sheds some light.
http://www.harvard-magazine.co.....10512.html