Thomas Keyes - Hooked On Fossils

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Thomas Keyes - Hooked On Fossils

By Frederick Smith
May 6, 2006

Even folks like Thomas Keyes, who display encyclopedic knowledge in certain areas, don't properly present the theory of evolution. First, let me address the notion of 'appealing to authority' – this has been thrown around quite a bit lately both in talk about global warming and now evolution at useless-knowledge. This is a logical fallacy defined thus:

Description of Appeal to Authority

An Appeal to Authority is a fallacy with the following form:
1.Person A is (claimed to be) an authority on subject S.
2.Person A makes claim C about subject S.
3.Therefore, C is true.

This fallacy is committed when the person in question is not a legitimate authority on the subject. More formally, if person A is not qualified to make reliable claims in subject S, then the argument will be fallacious.

This sort of reasoning is fallacious when the person in question is not an expert. In such cases the reasoning is flawed because the fact that an unqualified person makes a claim does not provide any justification for the claim. The claim could be true, but the fact that an unqualified person made the claim does not provide any rational reason to accept the claim as true.

When a person falls prey to this fallacy, they are accepting a claim as true without there being adequate evidence to do so. More specifically, the person is accepting the claim because they erroneously believe that the person making the claim is a legitimate expert and hence that the claim is reasonable to accept. Since people have a tendency to believe authorities (and there are, in fact, good reasons to accept some claims made by authorities) this fallacy is a fairly common one.

Since this sort of reasoning is fallacious only when the person is not a legitimate authority in a particular context, it is necessary to provide some acceptable standards of assessment. The following standards are widely accepted:
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[Six points are listed, I've copied the relevant one – see the link at the start for the other five]

5. There is an adequate degree of agreement among the other experts in the subject in question.

If there is a significant amount of legitimate dispute among the experts within a subject, then it will fallacious to make an Appeal to Authority using the disputing experts. This is because for almost any claim being made and "supported" by one expert there will be a counterclaim that is made and "supported" by another expert. In such cases an Appeal to Authority would tend to be futile. In such cases, the dispute has to be settled by consideration of the actual issues under dispute. Since either side in such a dispute can invoke experts, the dispute cannot be rationally settled by Appeals to Authority.

There are many fields in which there is a significant amount of legitimate dispute. Economics is a good example of such a disputed field. Anyone who is familiar with economics knows that there are many plausible theories that are incompatible with one another. Because of this, one expert economist could sincerely claim that the deficit is the key factor while another equally qualified individual could assert the exact opposite. Another area where dispute is very common (and well known) is in the area of psychology and psychiatry. As has been demonstrated in various trials, it is possible to find one expert that will assert that an individual is insane and not competent to stand trial and to find another equally qualified expert who will testify, under oath, that the same individual is both sane and competent to stand trial. Obviously, one cannot rely on an Appeal to Authority in such a situation without making a fallacious argument. Such an argument would be fallacious since the evidence would not warrant accepting the conclusion.

It is important to keep in mind that no field has complete agreement, so some degree of dispute is acceptable. How much is acceptable is, of course, a matter of serious debate. It is also important to keep in mind that even a field with a great deal of internal dispute might contain areas of significant agreement. In such cases, an Appeal to Authority could be legitimate.

Science is rather unanimous about evolution. I do not mean to say that Thomas isn't aware of the above or that he agrees or disagrees with it, that's not my point. The point is to address the wider audience that may think, “ah-hah! Appeal to authority FALLACY, well, enough of this – it's flawed!”.

I do consider myself sort of an amateur expert on evolution even though I'm no biologist, if that means anything. I majored in computer science and took but a single college level biology class. Now that we have that established, I will quote extensively from expert site in this piece, an allowable-appeal, according to the above.

Thomas said this:

Tiktaalik was discovered in 2004. If the quoted statement is accurate therefore, as recently as 2004 there was an evolutionary gap that needed filling, which seems to contradict the contention of many people who champion the theory of evolution that there are no gaps. And if Tiktaalik goes only a “long way”, there is still some to go, which is what I was arguing in the first place.
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My point in my previous article was that sequences of fossils varying minutely one from the other over millions of years and constituting an irrefutable argument for the descent of any modern species from an ancient one simply do not exist.

“Gaps” is a straw man argument created by creationists. Science recognizes gaps, it just doesn't deem that key to the theory in the manner specified. Recall that fossils aren't the best evidence for evolution. This is the best evidence for common decent, and it has nothing to do with fossils: The molecular sequence evidence gives the most impressive and irrefutable evidence for the genealogical relatedness of all life. The nature of molecular sequences allows for extremely impressive probability calculations that demonstrate how well the predictions of common descent with modification actually match empirical observation.

Here is a statement about gaps from talkorigins.org – an expert site which reflects the common scientific view. Science doesn't deny gaps at all:

Ideally, of course, we would like to know each lineage right down to the species level, and have detailed species-to-species transitions linking every species in the lineage. But in practice, we get an uneven mix of the two, with only a few species-to-species transitions, and occasionally long time breaks in the lineage. Many laypeople even have the (incorrect) impression that the situation is even worse, and that there are no known transitions at all. Why are there still gaps? And why do many people think that there are even more gaps than there really are?

One can read the rest at their site and I've included more below as well. I used the contents of my head in my last article, in this article, I'll leave it to the experts. My goal isn't to prove Thomas wrong per se, nor is to show how much I know, it's to impress on third parties that even though Thomas has issues with the theory, the theory itself is as sound as electromagnetism or plate tectonics or any other theory. All theories have gaps – to have no gaps would require infinite knowledge (we'd have to understand the entire universe). There is no special reason that evolution as a theory is somehow more mysterious or weaker. On the contrary, it's one of the “best” theories we have in terms of evidence and usefulness.

I personally feel that the theory of evolution, as an idea, is so peremptory and ineluctable that all other schemes must inevitably be shown false. The only problem is that the fossil record does not bear this out, and it must necessarily bear it out for the theory to be true.

Perhaps it must be so for you, but not for science and certainly not for the validity of the theory. One might intuitively think that in order for electromagnetism to be valid, that we ought to know what in the heck an electron is or how lighting works. Lighting! Something so seemingly basic, something so famous with that key+kite experiment still BAFFLES us!

The mathematical probability that no fossil sequence should ever be even remotely similar to the spectrum-like series of graduations required by evolution is zero!

Talkorigins has an impressive list of transitions in many areas, as well a sane discussion of punctuated equilibrium, something that Creationists love to misquote. Here are some highlights:

The first and most major reason for gaps is "stratigraphic discontinuities", meaning that fossil-bearing strata are not at all continuous. There are often large time breaks from one stratum to the next, and there are even some times for which no fossil strata have been found. For instance, the Aalenian (mid-Jurassic) has shown no known tetrapod fossils anywhere in the world, and other stratigraphic stages in the Carboniferous, Jurassic, and Cretaceous have produced only a few mangled tetrapods. Most other strata have produced at least one fossil from between 50% and 100% of the vertebrate families that we know had already arisen by then (Benton, 1989) -- so the vertebrate record at the family level is only about 75% complete, and much less complete at the genus or species level. (One study estimated that we may have fossils from as little as 3% of the species that existed in the Eocene!) This, obviously, is the major reason for a break in a general lineage. To further complicate the picture, certain types of animals tend not to get fossilized -- terrestrial animals, small animals, fragile animals, and forest-dwellers are worst. And finally, fossils from very early times just don't survive the passage of eons very well, what with all the folding, crushing, and melting that goes on. Due to these facts of life and death, there will always be some major breaks in the fossil record.

Gaps galore, oh my!

Species-to-species transitions are even harder to document. To demonstrate anything about how a species arose, whether it arose gradually or suddenly, you need exceptionally complete strata, with many dead animals buried under constant, rapid sedimentation. This is rare for terrestrial animals. Even the famous Clark's Fork (Wyoming) site, known for its fine Eocene mammal transitions, only has about one fossil per lineage about every 27,000 years. Luckily, this is enough to record most episodes of evolutionary change (provided that they occurred at Clark's Fork Basin and not somewhere else), though it misses the most rapid evolutionary bursts. In general, in order to document transitions between species, you specimens separated by only tens of thousands of years (e.g. every 20,000-80,000 years). If you have only one specimen for hundreds of thousands of years (e.g. every 500,000 years), you can usually determine the order of species, but not the transitions between species. If you have a specimen every million years, you can get the order of genera, but not which species were involved. And so on. These are rough estimates (from Gingerich, 1976, 1980) but should give an idea of the completeness required.

And here's stuff about actually finding the fossils:

The second reason for gaps is that most fossils undoubtedly have not been found. Only two continents, Europe and North America, have been adequately surveyed for fossil-bearing strata. As the other continents are slowly surveyed, many formerly mysterious gaps are being filled (e.g., the long-missing rodent/lagomorph ancestors were recently found in Asia).
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Documenting a species-to-species transition is particularly grueling, as it requires collection and analysis of hundreds of specimens. Typically we must wait for some paleontologist to take it on the job of studying a certain taxon in a certain site in detail. Almost nobody did this sort of work before the mid-1970's, and even now only a small subset of researchers do it. For example, Phillip Gingerich was one of the first scientists to study species-species transitions, and it took him ten years to produce the first detailed studies of just two lineages (see part 2, primates and condylarths).

Note the “brazen” attitude with which the lack of fossils and the associated problems are presented. This is because, as I've said, fossils are no longer a key component for the theory as a whole. Certainly it's interesting to know how a specific lineage developed, but it's not required for a sound theory.

My interest is also political. Evolution is a valid theory which must be taught in science class alongside electromagnetism. There is internal debate within the evolution community about many things, but basic tenants such as common decent, are accepted as fact and for good reason.

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About the author Frederick Smith: I enjoy writing about the positive virtues of humanism - humanists are the good guys.

I now have a blog that I will start to increasingly maintain and update. Here is the link:

fredsuberview.blogspot.com/

About my personal background and life: I was born, I got some education, worked, ate, and had some kids. It seems I like to write � something that was unknown to me until relatively recently...How's that for detail? ;)

Hate mail is welcome unless you are from the Army Of God. Please! It's not that I mind seeing pictures of aborted fetuses in my inbox, but once you've seen one you've pretty much seen them all...

Email: dahlek65@gmail.com

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