The Royal Society’s Evolution Meeting: James MacAllister / Why Neo-Darwinism was the Biggest Mistake in the History of Science

James MacAllister, curator of the Lynn Margulis archive at the University of Massachussetts Amherst. He wrote a thorough review of the London 2016 evolution conference at the Royal Society.

James MacAllister is the volunteer archivist for the Lynn Margulis archive at the University of Massachussetts-Amherst.

Jim runs envevo.org, the Environmental Evolution website. Lynn Margulis was the champion of Symbiogenesis theory.

She fought tremendous opposition from Neo-Darwinists to get the theory accepted. Today she is widely regarded as one of the greatest evolutionary biologists of all time.

I met Jim at the Royal Society evolution meeting in London, and in a very brief conversation discovered much in common. Jim runs envevo.org, the Environmental Evolution blog.

He wrote a fantastic synopsis of the Royal Society meeting. I encourage you to read his entire report. Meanwhile, some highlights:

“The Modern Synthesis, while undoubtedly productive for a time, is a misconception of reality that has reached the limits of its explanatory power. The problems are fundamental. No amount of cosmetic surgery is going correct them.”

“Most of these ‘new trends’ are not new nor are they trends. They have been known and studied quite apart from neo-Darwinism for a long time. Symbiosis and symbiogenesis, for example, have been investigated for over a century while being dismissed and discouraged by proponents of the Modern Synthesis.” 

“Awareness or mentions of these processes by neo-Darwinists fall far short of serious investigation. It is true that these processes have been bolstered or confirmed by evidence from molecular biology, but that evidence generally contradicted the view of the Modern Synthesis. The Modern Synthesis is no longer synonymous with evolutionary biology, molecular biology, or any of the multiple disciplines currently contributing to our understanding of evolution.”

“Martin Brasier, the late Oxford paleontologist, defined science not as the revelation of underlying simplicity, laws or ideals, but as “a unique system for the measurement of doubt.”  This is a helpful conception because it explains why science must be skeptical, but also measured in its skepticism. It avoids the temptation of certainty and leaves the mind open to surprise. Science measures. It compares tests to controls. Experiments and analyses are designed to minimize bias and expose logical fallacies. Results must be reproducible. Science questions unquestioned assumptions. Its theories must be predictive. It does not ignore anomalies, but acknowledges and investigates them.” 

[Jokingly] “Now, through the of magic of we-have-long-known-about-this, symbiogenesis is claimed to be part and parcel of the Modern Synthesis.” (Referring to the Neo-Darwinists who were at the conference saying ’Awww, we’ve known about this stuff for decades!” Well it was the exact same research they’d been downplaying, not funding, denigrating and sidelining for 50 years, which can no longer be ignored.)

 “There is also the current HBO series West World where the character of Dr. Robert Ford (played by Anthony Hopkins) explains to his assistant Bernard (played by Jeffrey Wright) that “evolution forged all of sentient life on this planet using only one tool, the mistake.””

“The Modern Synthesis toolbox holds only one tool: the mistake, the blind random mutation. The organism is acted upon by the environmental elimination process: natural selection. No mention of new trends.

“Let’s not forget that Darwin himself had a better selection of tools in his On the Origin of Species toolbox.  Now we are presented with a toolbox that holds many tools. Some vintage ones, such as symbiogenesis. And long recognized ones, such as horizontal gene transfer, that couldn’t be swept under the rug. But wait there’s more: interspecific hybridization, whole genome duplications, the movement of mobile genetic elements (natural genetic engineering), plasticity, and niche construction. Magically, we are told that all these fit in the The Selfish Gene toolbox. What ever happened to that little toolbox that only held one tool, the mistake?”

John Hands has reported on the meeting in the BBC online Science Focus. During the first Round Table audience discussion, Hands introduced himself as the author of Cosmosapiens: Human Evolution from the Origin of the Universe (outstanding book by the way) and made the following comments.

“It’s appropriate that this meeting is being held at the Royal Society, whose motto, we were reminded yesterday, is “Nullius in verba”: Accept nothing on authority.  The current paradigm in evolutionary biology, NeoDarwinism, also called the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis, has been the authority for some 65 years.  It is, of course, a mathematical model based on several unquestioned assumptions, whose proof was given by 1940s game theory borrowed from economics.

“What we have heard over the last 2 days is empirical evidence that new species arise rapidly, from such mechanisms as symbiogenesis, horizontal DNA transfer, hybridisation, whole genome duplication, interactive systems producing novel emergent properties, and other mechanisms described in Part 2 of my book. These mechanisms contradict the fundamental tenets of neo-Darwinism, namely:

  1. Random gene mutations provide phenotypical characteristics enabling successful Darwinian competition;
  1. These random gene mutations spread through a population’s gene pool by sexual reproduction;
  1. Darwinian gradualism leads to the genetic transformation of populations of individual species members over tens of thousands of generations;
  1. Information flows one-way from a gene to a protein in a cell. Not one whit of empirical evidence shows that new species arise from the neo-Darwinian mechanism.
[Note that John Hands’ remarks above, issued during Q&A at the very end of the 3-day meeting, were the most complete definition of Neo-Darwinism ever offered at the London conference. The Neo-Darwinists avoided using any definition at all, as it would be damning to their cause.] Hands continues:

“To the contrary, Darwinian competition causes not the evolution of species but the destruction of species.  It is collaboration in its various forms that causes biological evolution. Hence I’m surprised by calls for extending the neo-Darwinian Evolutionary Synthesis. You can’t extend something that is broken. Surely what is needed now, after 65 years, is using the empirical evidence to develop a new paradigm for biological evolution.” 

Read Jim MacAllister’s entire report on the London evolution conference here.

To subscribe to Jim’s Environmental Evolution newsletter, send an email to jmacallister {at} environmentalevolution.org with the word “subscribe” in the subject field and please include your name and email address in the body.

Environmental Evolution, the first Big Earth History and Earth systems science course, was taught by Lynn Margulis at UMass from 1986-2010. Margulis was also the principle collaborator with James Lovelock on the Gaia hypothesis, the proposal that the entire earth can be understood as a single macro-organism.

Download The First 3 Chapters of Evolution 2.0 For Free, Here – https://evo2.org/evolution/

Where Did Life And The Genetic Code Come From? Can The Answer Build Superior AI? The #1 Mystery In Science Now Has A $10 Million Prize. Learn More About It, Here – https://www.herox.com/evolution2.0

35 Responses

  1. Olavi Vaher says:

    There are two main theories of evolution. Darwinism claims that species evolved with thousands of years. Neo-Darwinism claims that species evolved with millions of years.

  2. John Graham says:

    Poor E. coli has been mutated by every agent know to man and has not ever producing a new species that is reproductively viable .

    • You should search this site for experiments successfully producing symbiogenesis events through cellular mergers.

      • Tom Mikkelson says:

        If by symbiogenesis you mean that a symbiotic relationship was made between two species that’s fine but still, no new viable species was produced. I believe that was John’s point.

        • Algae + eukaryotic cell = plant cell. Totally new species.

          • Scott Hatfield says:

            Perry, I don’t know how to break this to you, but horizontal gene transfer is neither terribly novel these days or incompatible with natural selection. McClintock and Margulis have been in high school bio texts for at least 15 years, and the mechanisms they propose merely introduce another source of variation for the action of natural selection. In the broadest sense, evolution is simply an interaction between the genome and the environment, and other genomes are part of that environment. Hint: what continually trips you up and prevents you from conceptualizing things properly isn’t evolutionary biology, but a set of assumptions about how information is created in the first place.

      • Tom Mikkelson says:

        Perry, I’ve started reading your book and you really seem to give cells the ability to think. You mentioned bacteria and horizontal transfer as if that is now the key to evolution and it’s ability to evolve to man. Yet with all this horizontal transfer bacteria remain bacteria. Seems you’ve just come up with a new can to kick down the road.

      • Frank says:

        I do not have a PHd. I do not have any published papers. But I am certain that evolution is a hoax simply because ANY theory based upon the idea that randomness or chance events can ever create or cause anything to be is a pipedream. That used to be called magic. If Dawkins can recognize “design” when he sees it…and simply adds “apparent’ to the noun to dilute the import of what he actually sees…isn’t that a clue that true science is taking a hit??

        • David Evan says:

          Well said. Anyone that rejects laws of inertia requiring an initial mover and entropy requiring an intelligent designer to accept the hoax of evolution is brainwashed

      • John Graham says:

        In Darwin’s first pages he lament that hybrids our sterile with no viable offspring so no new species. Each time I’ve read Darwins book I thought the title should have been ‘variation of species’

        • Darwin’s book did not deliver on its promise. Most animal hybrids are sterile but by no means all, and you only need an occasional success to get a new species. In my search I found ample empirical experimental (not merely fossil evidence) that you can reliably get new species through hybridization and symbiogenesis. All other evolutionary mechanisms are more gradual.

    • John Graham says:

      Look at the track record of mutation in fruit flies and tell me that these mistakes changed a mammal into a blue whale in 40 million yrs?

      • Dave says:

        Easy to say forty million years but it’s a long time, actually a vey very long time way beyond our comprehension. And how long have we been looking at fruit flies? Some perspective is needed here.

        • Oscar says:

          Adding incredible amounts of time just makes that theory less scientific.

        • Clive says:

          Even easier to point out that blue whales, being mamals occupy totally distinct phyla, with whales in cordata and fruit flies in arthropodia, which correspond to evolutionary divergence dating from the pre cambrian…..about 500 million years….just sayin’

        • John Graham says:

          A true believer. That statement is a fall back to a faith statement, no an answer with evidence. Mutations never add chacteristics. Let’s take a step back to Darwins original argument Against his own theory . Instinct and symbiotic relationships are not explained in the theory . No driver from simple to complex has ever been found. Highbreds are typically sterile .

        • John Graham says:

          Just as easy to say everything just happened a long time ago, but that is faith speaking not science. A dog into a whale with no fossil evidence is a big leap. The fossil record screams special creation at every level. Evolution demands more transitions than extant species,but the opposite is evident.

  3. Ralph says:

    Volunteer Archivist is the new PhD I am told

  4. Patrick Nobil says:

    Tell that to the capitalists who have successfully used social Darwinism to keep the working class enslaved. They ‘re not going to abandon a good thing. Especially now, when the republicans have abandoned science. Hell, we can’t even accept something as obvious as global warming, or free medical care. So what makes you this ‘revelation’ will make a difference to the body politic?

  5. Luke says:

    How do you respond to Dr John Sanford’s work on “Genetic Entropy?” Just curious.

  6. john macleod says:

    what you have is committed atheists stitching together another Theory/myth to keep the faith going.

  7. Allan says:

    Humans are addicted to committing to a belief system. We are hard wired to make sense of a world exhibiting both consensus and conflict. Darwinism is being revealed as mythology and an athiest religion. Not Darwins fault as much as the ‘scientists ‘ that followed. The same has happened to every religion, belief system and discipline. We have no recourse but to continue the race after truth. The god of science has been exposed in the case of Darwinism. The emporer needs some clothes.

  8. Paul says:

    Darwin died in 1882. He was probably the most intelligent man in history. He was certainly a highly skilled artist with amazing focus. “Debunking” a man who died 100 years before computers were widely used is … well, whatever. What the anti Darwinists seem to ignore is the affect of breeding.

    What makes evolution accelerate is not that species die, but that the weak in a litter die. This allows a species to accelerate growth into a niche extremely quickly. Open niches fill at breathtaking rates.

    What disappointing about the religious “scientists” is they don’t seem to understand the power of their own dogma. If it was obvious that the world was created in 7 days, it would be useless as a religious belief. Religions evolve to exclude people not include them. A religion that can’t excommunicate quickly falls into ruin. People aren’t leaving religion because they no longer believe Jesus walked on water. They NEVER believed that. They’re leaving because they don;t want to be lectured by pedophiles and preachers who cheat on their wives.

  9. Jeffrey Fink says:

    ON DARWINISM

    It seems that we have come back to Intelligent Design because the universe, as presently described by scientists, is still too small and too young to produce the complexity of a living cell by random processes. As Darwin himself stated, “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.”

    If Darwin would have had access to the findings of molecular biology and probability mathematics that we have available today, He would be stunned out of his mind at the unimaginable complexity of living things. With that knowledge he would have been too embarrassed to write such a book as “Origin of the Species”? On page 222 of the paperback Darwin admits to “grave cases of difficulty, some of which will be discussed in my future work”. Darwin never produced a future work!

    Darwin , in “Origin Of The Species” referred to his work as theory on pages 205, 206, 209, 211, 218, 219, 229, 230, 233, 292, 313, 309, 316, 323, 339, 341 and 343 of the paper back version as well as other places. It has been called the “theory of evolution” for over 100 years! Until the last decade or so the word theory was prominently connected to the word evolution. This forces me to ask “What blazing discovery of the past ten years has propelled the “theory of evolution” into the realm of indisputable fact? On the contrary, recent
    discoveries, and the lack thereof, have, if anything, cast more doubt than
    confirmation on the theory!

    When you have eyes that can’t quite see and wings that can’t quite fly, what random evolutionary force can bring these useless structures to completion? A winged but flightless animal that is in all other respects similar to its unwinged relatives would be at great disadvantage when competing for existence as he drags these encumbering appendages through life. Natural selection would eliminate this creature before he could pass on the somehow improved genetic traits that would form a flyable offspring. And, where would this freak find a suitable mate that would amplify the critical trait by allowing the improved wing gene to dominate? The forces of random mutation and natural selection would drive this useless feature to elimination, not completion!

    We should believe in variation and natural selection only within the constraints that we see it happen. People have demonstrated the boundaries of natural selection over the centuries by exploring the limits of unnatural selection through extensive breeding programs on numerous creatures. Dogs are a good example. The vast differences in sizes and shapes among the dog population are really astounding. But, in the end, they are all dogs. The varieties that are way out there tend to be unhealthy in various ways, and are obviously approaching some limit of viability. Inspite of all efforts of breeders to push the envelope, dogness remains. None of the extreme breeds are showing characteristics of a bird or a lizard. All dogs reproduce after their own kind. Despite our best efforts to push beyond the boundaries, trans-speciation has not occurred in any breeding experiments.

    Regarding the question of whether modern man is more or less physically advanced than his ancestors, we must factor in technology, our medical advancements, our recent knowledge of nutrition, and recent access to a variety of good food. We may only appear to be more robust than our ancestors. If these recent developments are factored in, we may find that we are devolving rather than evolving, and that the gene pool is in regression.

  10. It appears to me that a big problem is the loose definition of the term “evolution”.

    The definitions seem to range from “random non-purposeful change” to “purposeful, planned change”. There is talk of the “evolution” of computer programming, and then there is talk of organisms “evolving” through the mechanism of random, unplanned, undesigned mutations.

    As a Biblical Creationist and an Electronics Engineer who has studied both side of the argument since the 1970s, I have come to the studied conclusion that change and adaptability as well as the ability to self-repair has been purposefully designed into the organism’s DNA. In addition, it appears to me that the degree of possible “change” is limited in each organism.

    Seem to me that an important step would be to somehow agree on the definition of “evolution” or else to come up with a term that everyone could agree on.

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