Talk:Evolution/Archive 40

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Straw poll on trees

Poll on two old trees, not the current versions.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

Non-binding straw poll to assess opinion. TimVickers 20:41, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Four options:

  • No tree in article


  • Old, linear tree in article


  • New, circular tree in article
  • TimVickers 20:41, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
  • JF Mephisto 20:55, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Being that it was published in peer-reviewed journal in the past year, I must believe that it is accurate enough for use here.--BirgitteSB 21:14, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Believing sincerely that a ready compromise can be found to address all concerns. Please be gentle-spoken, Willow 21:26, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
  • So long as the image description makes clear the points raised by Silence (that it is a tree not of all life but of 100 or so specific species selected at random (or for a purpose other than to illustrate life as a whole) WAS 4.250 22:14, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Doc Tropics 23:35, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Aaron Bowen 23:41, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
  • John.Conway 08:56, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Agree with WAS 4.250 about making the tree's origins clear, Plumbago 13:29, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Hand-drawn tree in article
  • Both versions are hopeless inaccurate. The Woese one is out-of-date and has some non-monophyletic groupings, while the up-to-date one is overcomplicated and misleading due to its original use as a comparison of an arbitrary selection of specific individual species and their genomes. The fact that the circular tree is so wildly disproportional and distorted, plus the fact that its low-level phylogeny is complete nonsense and has nothing to do with the actual groupings of species (for example, it represents 4 different supraprimate species/"tips" as the only 4 mammal representatives, even though supraprimates represent only some 16.67% of the overall diversity of mammals, significantly less than the Afrotheres, Marsupials, and Laurasiatheres, who have 0 representatives; likewise, the synapsids get 4 species/"tips" while the much older and more diverse sauropsids get either 1 or 0 (depending on how you classify Aves); and don't even get me started on the absurdity of fixating randomly on the rats, mice, humans, and chimpanzees while ignoring all other rodents and primates!), makes it almost entirely useless, and all of the embellishments it has over the Woese chart, while pretty, are likely to either go over the heads of our readers altogether, or to actually misinform and deceive them.
  • So neither version is at all adequate (though the old one is superior just for its informational value and simplicity, and for having fewer raw errors). But why settle for either? We can very easily create a new one that keeps the virtues of both while eliminating the flaws of each. Just submit a request for one to Wikipedia:Requested pictures, detailing what the tree should look like. The last time I submitted an image request there, I got a fantastic diagram, so I'm sure the many talented artists there can be of great help in providing an adequate compromise. -Silence 21:02, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
  • I'll give Silence a chance. The circular one isn't that intuitive. BTW, I read the paper when it first came out. I accept it as correct as far as it goes.--Africangenesis 21:20, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Nobody disputes the accuracy of the paper. We aren't talking about a paper; we're talking about an image. As you, at least, recognize, just because a scientific paper is accurate doesn't mean that 100% of all images based on that paper are appropriate (much less ideal!) for a general-use, layperson-intended basic science article like Evolution. Accuracy does not, in itself, make something useful (and in any case the image itself isn't accurate anymore now that its irrelevant-to-the-article genomic information has been removed; it does not consistently correspond to the actual phylogenetic relationships of low levels of taxonomic classification). We could keep the pretty circular design and the accurate, up-to-date peer-reviewed information if we just eliminated the unnecessarily specific information (why include sample species when the purpose is to show the phylogenetic relationships of broad groups of species, not to show how close pufferfish and chimpanzees are to each other?), and revised the relative size of the groupings accordingly. -Silence 21:29, 17 May 2007 (UTC)


How about something simple, like a modern Animalia tree? That's fairly widely agreed upon, and many of the phyla are well-known. Adam Cuerden talk 14:46, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Discussion of straw poll

Discussion of poll above.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
  • Comment. It's not accurate because TimVickers changed it. It was not intended as a stand-alone phylogenetic tree: its only purpose was to compare the relationships of an arbitrary assortment of genome-sequenced species. The "tips" of the tree (and thus the close relationships between those tips) do not correspond to broad phylogenetic groupings of any kind; they correspond to "random" (though heavily bias-influenced) individual species, like the zebrafish, the human, and the house mouse. Yet because the genomic information has been removed without the tree itself being correspondingly changed, we are essentially lying to our readers. The old tree is merely out-of-date; the new tree is outright deceptive, altered and taken out of its original scientific context. Such changes would be considered scientific fraud if submitted for publication without indication of the distortion involved; as the edited tree is instead being given to uninformed laypeople as though accurate, the offense is doubly bad, as it is also spreading misinformation to the public, and to the reader base for whom this article was created! -Silence 21:22, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
Silence if you have not read the paper you should refrain from such language. You would not write above if you had read it, specifically this sentence: "Yet because the genomic information has been removed without the tree itself being correspondingly changed, we are essentially lying to our readers.", makes absolutely no sense in light of actually reading the paper. I can send you the pdf if you cannot access this paper. David D. (Talk) 21:37, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
Feel free to send a pdf, if it'll stop the broken record and get you to actually communicate. -Silence 21:40, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
I am trying to communicate but you are assuming i don't understand you point becuase i disagree with you (see above with regard to we cannot create our own tree it is original research). I'll send the pdf too. David D. (Talk) 21:47, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
I apologize if I'm mistakenly inferring that you are misunderstanding my point, but everything you're saying implies that you aren't understanding my point: you say it would be "original research" to make our own tree, but the tree I'm proposing we make is no different from the "new tree", just with the excess, species-level details stripped away so we can focus on the more important relationships between the major groups of life. I never proposed adding new species to replace the horrible inconsistency, bias, and distortion in the current selection; rather, all along I've been proposing that we simply remove the species, because it doesn't significantly benefit our readers to tell them that brown rats are more closely related to wild chickens than to zebrafish. If that's "original research", than all summarizing on every article of Wikipedia is "original research", because trimming off non-essential details so readers can get a better grasp on the (still entirely intact) major points is apparently prohibited by WP:NOR. -Silence 22:01, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
No need to apologise. Here is the problem, trimming off some species will change the tree, if rerun on a computer program. Therefore, if we cut them out and say here is the tree it is not accurate at all. We would have to run the program again to create the new tree with the subset of species. David D. (Talk) 22:49, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
When have I suggested trimming off some species? My suggestion all along has been trimming off all the species. We're not writing this article for a computer program; we're writing it for human beings with little to no knowledge of biology, much less phylogeny. It doesn't matter whether we could submit the image to a computer program and have it generate correct data; all that matters is that we could submit the image to a human mind and have it learn valuable information. For the latter purpose, the simpler and more intuitive (to laypeople) the image is, the better. And since the species information is non-essential and gets in the way of easily understanding the broader phylogenetic relationships, I see no reason to retain it. -Silence 23:02, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
There are no such species-level details in the figure. Instead it gives an accurate impression of the relative evolutionary distances between several different broad groups of organism. This is what the figure is intended to do and this is what it does. TimVickers 22:10, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps Silence's objections can be overcome with a well-crafted caption? I think we all agree that the new circular tree is based on better data, right? The points of contention seem to be whether its labels are too obscure for lay-readers (e.g., Firmicutes) and whether it is complete/quantitative in its distribution of species or temporal divergence. One solution might be to explain some of the more interesting labels in the caption, and to characterize the scope of the diagram as "qualitative". Speaking for myself, I find the new tree lucid with beautiful symmetry. Of course, a still better Figure might be made, had we but world enough, and time. ;) Willow 21:26, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment. The issue isn't that it's incomplete in its distribution of species, but that it's inconsistent. I'd rather have 0 species represented, as that's the most efficient and useful way to convey the basic relationships between major groups; there is no reason, for the sake of our readers, to have such an intricate, completely unlabeled, arbitrary set of "tips" to the tree. The only reason it's there, now that the genomes and species names have been removed, is to try and shock and awe readers with the tree's complexity, even though that complexity, at least regarding the outer reaches of the tree, has no scientific significance other than to show what arbitrary species a few geneticists decided to study. This tree is essentially a pictorial form of technobabble: it sacrifices clarity and simplicity for trying to look smart and snazzy by being meaninglessly overelaborate and opaque. The problem with trying to explain the tree with a caption is that an adequate caption would be longer than the Evolution article itself. Just look at how many pages we've already used up trying to work through this tangled mess of an image? And most of us are probably hundreds of times better-educated about evolution and phylogeny than our average reader will be! So how can we expect them to discern the significance of the arbitrary stemming? -Silence 21:40, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
I think I can speak to this point a little, having only the vaguest understanding of phylogeny and evolution. If we readers don't know much of phylogeny, we also don't know what we're missing. As an expert, it may be hard to conceive, but I had no clue that brown rats and chickens were being compared in the Figure; all I could see, the only meaning the Figure held for me, was that all the grossly different types of life had emanated from a common ancestor a Very Long Time Ago. It didn't occur to me to gauge the precise details of that divergence, or the relative percentages of its variegated branches. Perhaps a solution might be to redirect readers smarter and more curious than me to another page, here at Wikipedia or elsewhere, that explains the circular tree in greater detail, so that we don't have to write such a large caption? However, I do agree that a better Figure could indeed be requested and installed, once crafted and agreed upon. Remember sweet serenity and gentle accord, we're all Wikipedians and share a common goal, Willow 22:29, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the helpful message! I agree that we are all working toward a common goal, even if we disagree on methods sometimes, and I apologize if I was getting a bit too aggressive with some of my recent comments. However, it doesn't surprise me that the only things you gained from the image are that the great diversity of modern life all ultimately descend from a common ancestor; you could glean this same information from almost any other rendering of a phylogenetic tree. My primary problem with the circular model is that I feel that it is so complex that readers won't be likely to glean any more information than that from the image: unlike the old version of the tree, they won't be as likely to understand the relationship between Eukaryotes, Archaea, and Bacteria, nor the relationships between the major subgroups of those domains. In an extremely simple tree, it is quite plausible that a reader will get more than just the basic idea of common descent from looking over the tree; but when we overdo it like this, my fear is that even the most attentive readers will kind of "zone out" and just look in awe at the complexity without actually absorbing any of the important basic facts about how organisms are related. I don't want to awe our readers; I want to inform them. Making the image pretty, although something I passionately care about because of its use for "drawing readers in", is firmly a secondary concern for me. If one image conveys more information to your average layperson than another, then I will not hesitate to favor the more informative one. And I feel that in that respect, we can certainly do better than the current circular tree. -Silence 22:43, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
  • This straw poll is hopelessly biased. It deliberately misrepresents the "other" option as a "hand-drawn tree" in an attempt to discredit it right off the bat, and tries to gather everyone's opinions before there'd been more than the most preliminary discussion on the newly-proposed "third option", and certainly before anyone had apparently understood what was involved in that option. It comes across as a rather transparent attempt to cut off further discussion and consideration of other alternatives to the two truly horrifically bad and profoundly misleading already-tried trees. It also provides images of the "new" one, but none of the old, and certainly none of the "third option" proposal which hasn't even been given time for anyone to design a draft! Although it is always useful to know people's opinions on an issue at a given time, there is always the concern that the poll will be used to justify avoiding discussing that issue sufficiently, and that is magnified when a poll is used to preempt discussion of a brand-new idea. If we do use the circular tree image, we clearly cannot use it in its current incarnation (because it lacks the labels for the species its data is based on, and thus what the branch tips actually correspond to), so regardless of which alternative people prefer, we're not going to end up using the current version of any of the images that have yet been proposed. At this stage we need to be brainstorming and weighing options, not trying to settle on the least of two evils among the currently-finished images. -Silence 00:26, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
The poll was premature. Let us see the new tree, we will all look at it with an open mind. There is no hurry or harm, and hopefully no prejudice.--Africangenesis 00:56, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

More recognizable names for knitters and lay-people?

Hi, I like both Madeleine's and Tim's tree images, which seem to have complementary beauties and advantages. There seemed to be some interest in finding more lay-friendly, more recognizable names for some of the phyla? That seems difficult to do, but perhaps we could find an infamous example from each phylum, such as Madeleine's "Malaria parasite"? Here's a list of some suggested "bad bugs" that might be useful to our master arborists:

Just a thought, Willow 11:40, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm a little worried about using specifics for groups, but you do choose well. Could we set in up in such a way that both the group name and Willow's excellent examples are listed?
One problem with this tree is that it leaves out major groups; Ascomycetes and Basidomycetes jump out at me from their abscence, as this leaves the fungal kingdom with only yeasts, none of what are popularly called fungi. (This is, of course, the problem with using only the fully-sequenced genomes to set out the tree.) Perhaps we should be combining sources. I for one think that we should by all means include all three domains, but should also do what we can to expand out Eukaryotes in a seperate diagram, to the level of phylum, with some of the more important classes specified under that (Mainly the arthropods, molluscs, and chordates, I'd say.) Adam Cuerden talk 12:07, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
Speaking as a protozoologist, I'm dammed that if I had to shoehorn entire phyla as diverse and close to my heart as Gardia, Leishmania and Plasmodium into "Protozoa" that I'm going to expand boring old metazoa in any way! (joke) :)
More seriously, what is the point we are trying to make with this diagram? I'm trying to convey the diversity of life and the large proportion that is microbial as the two take-home messages. TimVickers 12:34, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
Hmm. Actually, looking, the tree's next to a section on the evolution of life. Which, frankly, calls for rather different things than a standard phylogenetic tree is oing to give us.
Ideally, what we want is a fairly large-scale diagram illustrating not the end branches, but the splits - explaining what important features were passed down by the common ancestors to each split, and what new features identify the split. I can do this for the metazoans, I think, and can probably manage fungi and plants as well. Can you do this for the protozoans, then we could combine our diagrams? Adam Cuerden talk 15:00, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
I like Willow's idea. It sounds like you guys are all more experienced in this field ... but to me, most of these phyla names are meaningless. I recognize the importance of the difference, and yet I'd have no idea what to say if someone asked "what sort of bacteria are firmicutes"? Maybe Adam's idea could be used, each branch a line with two labels, one side a group name, the other side a representative species. Regarding all these complaints about "X isn't on the tree", can anyone point to a published tree that could be used to expand this one? Madeleine 15:46, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't like the idea of classifying an entire domain of life in terms of what a tiny proportion of it's members can do to humans. Seems deeply antropocentric. I'm going to avoid the pathogens entirely. I had the same problem with the bacteria article, people always wanted to discuss bacteria in terms of either what they can do for us or if they hurt us - not as organisms in their own right. I do like the "Green nonsulfur bacteria" and can live with "Gram-positives" and "blue-green algae" I've also merged all the proteobacteria by rotating the diagram and cut some of the "minor" phyla. I say "minor" as in "probably only 10x more species than chordates" minor. TimVickers 16:06, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

How about two or more of these images? The one in this section and one for animals. Maybe add a third for mammals. Four for primates. Fifth for homo*. Sixth for a geneology of some living humans. Or maybe skip some of the middle ones. Or maybe for dog breeds instead of humans. WAS 4.250 16:29, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

That seems excessive, at least, for this article alone. Are you being serious, planning to use all of them in their respective articles, or facetious? Adam Cuerden talk 16:46, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
  • The "example bacteria" idea is an interesting one. It certainly would make the tree more practical and meaningful for laypeople. Perhaps we could do the same for Archaea? (Or we could do precisely the opposite, and just leave "Archaea" without bothering with subtypes.) However, there doesn't seem to be any need to do the same for Eukaryotes, so perhaps we could use different font sizes to represent the level of detail of the name: we could use a mid-sized font for groupings like Animal and Plant (and a larger-sized font for Archaea, Bacteria, and Eukaryotes, should we choose to label those on the image itself), but a smaller font for the individual species examples, like "Syphilis bacteria". This would also allow us to use a mix of specific and general names for the bacteria: "Blue-green algae" and "Gram-positive bacteria" would be larger than "Anthrax bacteria" and the like. I think that would be reasonably clear, plus it would avoid some overcrowding.
  • One thing I don't think would be wise would be including the large groupings and example species: that would just make the tree far too crowded, unless we cut down the number of groupings represented severely.
  • As for the idea of focusing on Eukaryotes, I'd actually considered that possibility before (though certainly not to the exclusion of a full-life phylogeny): we could very well do something like having a multi-domain phylogeny, and then using a "magnifying glass" effect to focus in on the eukaryotes as well in the image's corner. But I don't see the need for that; it raises possible POV issues, as Tim noted. -Silence 17:27, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
I think one problem is that we're not paying attention to what sections it's next to: the origin of life and The evolution of life. Is a phylogenetic tree actually all that relevant to those sections? Franky, I'm inclided to say no; we ought to have a diagram showing the leading proposals for abiogenesis, or diagramming the broad-scale evolutionary splits down to the phylum level, including, so much as is possible, the extinct phyla. Or maybe Image:Charnia_Spun.jpg, an example of the Ediacaran fauna? Or something on the Cambrian explosion.
Frankly, there's far better choices than a phylogenetic tree where all the important information relevant to the subject is hidden in those little line diagrams we haven't actually bothered to explain the meaning of. Adam Cuerden talk 18:25, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
A phylogenetic tree shows what happened in the evolution of life. I can't think of any simpler way of showing this. TimVickers 18:52, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
As a complete moron in biology, an example of each might be helpful, as long as we do not throw out the real informaion. Remember that >95% of the people looking at these articles will be people with a high school level background or less in biology.--Filll 19:00, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

I was thinkind something like (and obviously, this is off the top of my head)

Common to all life: DNA, ribosomes

|

Transcription method evolves down different paths -----> Bacteria

|

Archea

|

Fusion of several archae forms Eukaryotes

|

Etc.


Etc. Obviously, in a graphic, we can continue dividing up Bacteria, Archea, as well as dividing up the Eukaryotes, but it'd be nice to have a flowchart-style diagram showing the splits and events that created all of life. And more educational than a mere phylogenetic tree. Adam Cuerden talk 20:15, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Um... you must mean ribosomes, not mitochondria. :-) That said, it sounds like a cool graphic idea... If you can fill that out with more information I might try to draw it, for fun. Madeleine 21:27, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
Yes, quite. Sorry, I was kind of high on painkillers yesterday - had a bad bout of food poisoning the day before, and was given codeine so that I no longer wished for death. =) I'll see what I can do. Adam Cuerden talk 10:52, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Evolution of complexity

Passive and active trends in the evolution of complex organisms.

What do people think of this image? This section is my next step once I've dealt with the peer-review comments. TimVickers 03:22, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

It's a nice graph, but I guess I need to read something in the article to fully understand it. Orangemarlin 03:59, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

"To make a case for or against a trend in the evolution of complexity in biological evolution, complexity needs to be both rigorously defined and measurable. A recent information-theoretic (but intuitively evident) definition identifies genomic complexity with the amount of information a sequence stores about its environment. We investigate the evolution of genomic complexity in populations of digital organisms and monitor in detail the evolutionary transitions that increase complexity. We show that, because natural selection forces genomes to behave as a natural 'Maxwell Demon,' within a fixed environment, genomic complexity is forced to increase." from this source WAS 4.250 20:17, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

That quote was removed from this article in former improvement attempt but still exists at Evidence of common descent. WAS 4.250 20:20, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

I've tried to read that paper and find it almost completely opaque! TimVickers 21:12, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
Do you find the source "unreliable"? or the quote "off topic"? Is there some specific thing that is opaque? or just a general lack of knowledge about computer science? Or maybe you are just saying you can't independently vouch for the accuracy of each and every step of the argument? If it is the last, well our original research rule says our original conclusions don't matter anyway, we are merely supposed to identify reliable claims from reliable sources and I believe the quote is that. WAS 4.250 22:09, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
No, I mean that I just couldn't understand what the paper was trying to tell me. Might just have been that it as last thing at night and maths has never been my strongpoint. TimVickers 00:51, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
Are you seeing "genomic complexity is forced to increase" and not understanding that or are you thinking there has to be more, all this can't be just to prove something so obvious? It seemed to me that it was an attempt to set up simple believable initial mathematical modeling "axioms" and show that "genomic complexity is forced to increase" is necessary under those "axioms". Are you aware of using the computer to experimentally (rather than strictly deductively) investigate the world of math (especially complex interations) the way scientists investigate the physical world (and induce laws just as valid as physical science laws)? Complexity must be studied experimentally rather than deductively. There are some information science theroms that are relevant but I can't remember them at the moment. WAS 4.250 05:05, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
Though this paper is interesting, it does not yet count as broad-based, generally-agreed science. Arguments from information theory can go in all possible directions. If you believe that Maxwell's demon is a well-understood concept, take a look at our own article on it. Finally, I'd suggest that when a topic makes heavy mathematical and conceptual demands on the reader it would be better to leave it out of an article that we hope will be widely accessible. EdJohnston 15:53, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Finally got around to adding the new section. Hopefully, reading this will explain why I am so keen on giving an accurate reflection of prokaryotic diversity in the tree. Comments? Suggestions? TimVickers 19:37, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

The wording could be a bit clearer, but I have to say that in general, I like it.--Filll 20:01, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Better? I tried to simplify it a bit by removing some unnecessary details. TimVickers 20:12, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

  1. Did you make this section top-level by accident? It looks like you meant it to be a section of "Outcomes", rather than making "Adaptation" the sole "Outcomes" section and making Co-evolution and Speciation/Extinction subsections of "Progress and complexity".
Thanks, didn't see that. TimVickers 20:56, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
  1. "Surprisingly, these undirected forces have led to the evolution of some remarkably complex organisms." - "Surprisingly"? Surprising to whom? (The reader?) Why is this surprising? I know why you wrote this, but it doesn't seem neutral.
I think it is surprising that a non-directed process can produce such complex organisms. If you think some people might expect this, I could change it.
  1. "This observation has led to the common idea of evolution being progressive" - An idea that is supported and validated, not dismantled, by having a section of Evolution be called "Progress and complexity" (especially as a subsection of "Outcomes of evolution").
Good point, renamed to simply "complexity"
  1. "As shown to the right," - Ideally, the only text referencing images should be captions, because some versions of Wikipedia might be imageless. This also raises self-referencing issues, as articles shouldn't reference themselves; you wouldn't have a phrase like "if you look at the Table of Contents," or "if you read the next paragraph," so having a phrase like "if you look at the image on the right," is potentially problematic for the same reason. In this case, it seems like the caption itself should explicitly note. Even with that explanation, though, I don't think that the vast majority of readers will understand any aspect of the image, as currently presented; even though I understand the point you're trying to make, even I can't figure out what the chart is meant to represent. The way "Time" is presented is particularly confusing, and seems to contradict the actual graph.
I've changed the caption, see if the new version is clearer.
  1. "This involves an increase in variance around an unchanging average." - Our reader base does not consist of statisticians. The explanations in this section are opaque. The sentence after this does a much better job of explaining things, but the explanation is if anything made less clear by sentences like this.
I've changed this, it was wrong anyway as the average will be altered.
  1. "Indeed, the most important form of life on earth are prokaryotes: the bacteria and archaea." - Judging any organism's relative "importance" reflects a POV. This should obviously be avoided.
Reworded to "Indeed, from a biological view, the most prominent form of life on earth are prokaryotes"
  1. "Prokaryotes have been on earth for about 4,000 million years," - We can't just say "4 billion years"?
I always try to avoid billion where I can, as it has two meanings. Remove it to shorten section, this is covered later anyway. TimVickers 20:56, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
  1. This entire section seems overblown, going into ridiculous levels of detail for a topic that is at best extremely tangentially related to the core topic of Evolution. I could see a paragraph or at most two being warranted by this topic, but an entire section? We're spending twice as much time on "progress and complexity" as we are on "genetic drift"!! It seems like you could convey the same information all the more clearly just by coming straight out and saying. The point of the section seems to be to try to combat a common misconceived POV of life (the POV that eukaryotes are more "important" than prokaryotes--but going too out of one's way to combat a POV is itself POVed!), whereas the point of Evolution is to inform readers about the process of evolution, not just to correct people's common errors about various biological topics. It's rather skewed that we spend over 6 pages on "Outcomes of evolution" and not even 4 on "Mechanisms" (and only 2 pages on the two most important mechanisms, drift and selection). We're getting off-track, and also forgetting the fact that one of this article's main past problems has been bloat: this article has been so severely criticized for length in the past that for a long time I had to fight against the editorial misconception that we couldn't expand anything in the article. But now attitudes have shifted to the opposite extreme, where there's almost complete disregard for keeping the article concise enough to have a realistic chance at becoming an FA (this article is already 105kb and still missing a lot of key topics, whereas most FAs aren't more than 50kb). We need to take a step back and remember that we can't cover every important topic in depth on Evolution. -Silence 20:18, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
Actaually, we can't say 4 billion years: Billion is ambiguous. However, frankly, this section seems ridiculously low on detail. If you wanted to go into methods of evolving complexity; duplications, crossing over errors, etc - then that'd be one thing. As it stands, it's kinda ranty and off-topic, discussing at length and with a graphic that which could be said in a sentence: The prokaryotes outnumber eukaryotes by such great numbers that they make up half the biomass of the world, despite their tiny size, and can adapt to far more extreme environments. Adam Cuerden talk 20:32, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
Re: "Billion", don't be silly, we don't throw out perfectly good words with clear and established meanings just because they also have lesser-known meanings that are entirely archaic in English. Wikipedia's own style guide says: "Billion is understood as 1,000,000,000 in the United States, English Canada and most of the rest of the English-speaking world." -Silence 20:47, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
But not Britain. Adam Cuerden talk 21:52, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
My British husband has the impression that the 10^12 usage has been phased out, and that feeling seems to be backed up by wikipedia itself: "Today, the UK uses the short scale exclusively in official and mass media usage, although some long-scale usage still continues." see Long and short scales wikipedia page. Madeleine 04:49, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
Adam are you sure this is correct? Are you saying that no British scientist works with the age of the Earth being around 4 billion years? Nature does not seem to have a problem publishing such a number and they are a British journal. As a student in Britain I remember 4 billion being used in geology classes. David D. (Talk) 05:00, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
As a student in New Zealand in the 1970s, I remember changing from the long to the short billion in science classes. We followed the British, who apparently changed in 1974. rossnixon 05:40, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
  • I don't really see the need for a whole section on this, merely to combat a misconception. It would be like having a subsection on "Abiogenesis" solely to combat the misconception that abiogenesis is a part of evolution: treating it in so much detail does more to further the misconception than to combat it, as it (1) obscures the actual correction of the misconception, as most people won't bother to read it in enough detail to get the point; and (2) implies that this topic is an area of significant scientific dispute. That's why I think just a brief paragraph or two could suffice. Suppose the whole "Outcomes of evolution" lead was simply this:
    Although the general process of evolution primarily consists of small changes, these changes accumulate over time, leading to a variety of dramatic outcomes. Organisms adapt to their environments due to selection; they interact with each other and form complex dynamics of cooperation and competition; and they diverge into distinct lineages through speciation.
    It is a common misconception that evolution always involves "progress", but adaptations are purely situational and show no long-term "goal". Likewise, evolution does not necessarily result in greater complexity. Although evolution has resulted in many complex species, it has done so largely because of chance: the number of complex organisms has increased as a side-effect of the overall number of organisms increasing, and simple life remains dominant. The overwhelming majority of species are microscopic prokaryotes, which form about half the world's biomass despite their small size, and constitute the vast majority of Earth's biodiversity. Simple life remains dominant on Earth, and complex life appears more diverse only because of sampling bias.
  • Something akin to that gets the same basic message across, but gets to the point a lot more quickly. We don't need to go into detail on the math in this article; if you want to explore this topic in that level of depth, I recommend making a new article to deal with the topic, like Evolution of complexity, which we can simply link to from Evolution. -Silence 20:47, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

I would be curious to hear any comments about this book [1] that claims to "prove" that evolution is progressive. Also look at The Great Story.--Filll 20:54, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

I think we really do need this section. One of the most obvious results of evolution are complex organisms and the discussions above clearly show that the diversity of microbes and the implications this has for evolution are not widely appreciated. TimVickers 21:09, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
But devoting an entire section to it implies that complexity really is one of the most important, crucial, commonplace outcomes of evolution, when in reality little could be further from the truth. If anything, it is more common to become less complex than more complex through evolution. We're reinforcing the misconception that complex life is a central, inevitable consequence of evolutionary change by spending a whole section just to say "People think X, but they're wrong.", when we could just as easily convey the same idea in a paragraph at the top of "Outcomes of evolution". Our job on this article is to explain evolution to readers, not to combat the "lack of appreciation" some people have for microorganisms. This article is not about microorganisms. If anything, a better "general" article for combating this misconception would be Life, or better yet Biodiversity, since all of this has little to nothing to do with the process of evolution (since, as noted, evolution usually doesn't result in greater complexity!). -Silence 21:19, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

You can't say something is implied by a section that states the opposite. By that logic having a section called "Fire trucks are red" would imply that fire trucks are green. I'm not discussing microorganisms for their own sake, this section focusses specifically on the implications that the diversity of microbes has for the evolution of complex life - with complex life commonly being regarded as one of the most prominent outcomes of evolution. This is a vital section of the article. TimVickers 21:26, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

If the section in question was titled "Evolution doesn't necessarily result in greater complexity", then you'd be right. But it doesn't. The title is simply "Complexity". And it's under "Results of evolution". Which means that the full title would be "Complexity, a result of evolution". The obvious implication is that evolution results in complexity. Since a majority of readers of Evolution won't bother going through the section in question, but many will at least see its title, you'll be misinforming more readers than you inform as a result of this section. Besides, the point stands that this isn't important enough to how evolution actually works to merit a whole section. What's next, are we going to have an entire section called "Monkeys evolving into humans" which corrects the misconception that monkeys evolved into humans? "Complexity" is the least vital section of the article, because evolution doesn't usually result in complexity! If anything, a dramatically more vital section of the article would be called "Simplification" or the like. -Silence 21:39, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
Complexity may be more apparent at the multicellular level, with developmental homeostasis, parental care, niche diversity, etc, but it is also present at the unicellular level, with internal homeostasis, stress responses, spores, organelles, etc. Complexity may not be the natural end result due to fragility, but when it takes the form of mechanisms reinforcing robustness, it becomes an intrinsic adapation and subsequently an enabler of evolution.--Africangenesis 21:57, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
"The obvious implication is that evolution results in complexity." Yes, that is the idea - evolution can result in complexity. You and I are proof of this. This section discusses why this is the case. Let's let some other people voice their opinions on this. We can decide what to do once we have more opinions to consider. TimVickers 21:53, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
But evolution doesn't usually result in greater complexity. The fact that it sometimes does, primarily for a very, very small subset of the total diversity of life, doesn't justify a big ol' section on the main page; it would be like having a section on the evolution of flight. It's not common enough to warrant a section, and giving it one reinforces and propagates common layperson misconceptions to that effect, rather than correcting them. If your purpose here is to counter mistaken ideas about evolution always leading to greater complexity, then you're going about it in exactly the wrong way, as the end result of having a section like this will be to make that misconception even more common. You're de-emphasizing the importance of how microorganisms have evolved and pushing them to the sidelines. Increased complexity is only one of thousands of different evolutionary "strategies" for survival, and the history of life tells us that it's one of the less common ones. Why, then, spend more than a paragraph on it? -Silence 22:10, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
Thank you for your opinion, Silence. I'm going to wait to see what other people think about this. Neither you nor I are sole arbiters of the contents of this article. TimVickers 22:18, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
Sure, but I figured we could come to an agreement if we discussed the matter. I wasn't merely stating my opinion, I was stating my reasoning; if I made an error in my justification for why we don't need a "complexity" section, feel free to point it out. Since you don't seem interested in further discussion, I'm going to post my proposal for how to best present the "complexity" information to the Evolution page so we can review it and compare the two. I think the shortened version is much more effective and concisely conveying the relevant information to readers. -Silence 22:32, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
To apply this argument to another section: Does evolution usually result in cooperation? It seems to me that evolution sometimes results in cooperation, sometimes results in complexity. What do you think about renaming these sections "Evolution of complexity" and "Co-evolution and evolution of cooperation"? I think the topics deserve to be covered, as a "how these things can be an outcome". On the other hand, I'm finding the "complexity" section horribly vague ... if I were an outside reader, I'd be coming to the article wondering "how can something complex like eyes evolve?" and this section isn't doing anything to enlighten me, it's just got a lot of vague references to "complexity". Maybe it could be more specific, address an example or two? One common animal example (eg eyes) and maybe a small scale one ... I dunno, like a flagella? Madeleine 16:16, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
That's why I also suggested changing the "Cooperation" section to "Cooperation and competition", in addition to turning the "Complexity" section into just a paragraph. There are too many different "outcomes of evolution" for us to have a section on every single one. We should focus on near-universal outcomes. -Silence 17:00, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
Competition is not an outcome of evolution, instead it is a requirement for natural selection to occur. Mixing requirements and outcomes would confuse the reader. Complexity is not a universal outcome, but we need to address it due to the anthopocentric fixation on it in many of the books and popular articles on this subject. How many times have people heard "The Age of Reptiles" or "The Age of Man"? How many diagrams of evolution that showed a progression from invertebrates, to reptiles to mammals? Just look at the Introduction to evolution article for two excellent examples - the "Tree of life" and the sentence "Today, the fossil record is more complete, and serves as a chronological record documenting the emergence of new, more complex species from simpler ancestral forms." TimVickers 17:28, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
Complexity seems a relative term without some biological definition-a single cell be it bacteria or protozoa is complex, and multicellular organisms can be complex in different ways. Seems a sort of ambiguous term without some definition as to what you mean. All life is complex. Complexity has to be defined in terms of all organisms-in genome structure, cell structure, or multicellular stucture. If you were to ask a layperson they would see complexity purely in terms of animals would be my guess. GetAgrippa 11:29, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
Indeed, this is a difficult area to quantify to say the least! The first reference tries to cover this point, it's a BioEssays review entitled "What is complexity". I put this as a way to cover both the point that complexity is hard to measure, but that it does exist. TimVickers 15:11, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
Reply to Madprime, above. Unfortunately, section titles shouldn't repeat the article title. This section was initially titled "Progress and complexity" as it focusses on if evolution is "progressive" - a very common misconception. I would be happy to expand this with a paragraph dealing with a specific example - a lot of studies have been done on morphological complexity and Cope's rule. I've also added some concrete examples of what people consider in this field in the lead. TimVickers 16:43, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Deletion of section on complexity

This is beginning to annoy me, Silence. I asked that we wait for other people's opinions before we decide what to do and I have sent messages to the people who have commented on the original proposal above, asking for feedback. However, instead of waiting for more input, you delete the section and figure and instead substitute the brief summary you proposed above. I am going to step back and see what the other contributors to this page think. Could you please replace the material until other people have looked at it. TimVickers 22:46, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Why not put both versions of the section on the Talk page for discussion? You put your own "complexity section" proposal in the article without waiting for feedback from lots of different people; isn't it a double standard to say that I can't put my "complexity paragraph" proposal in the article? You got feedback for your version following the section being put up; now we can get feedback on the summarized version, as well as compare the two. That will help us more quickly come to a conclusion on what to use in the end. -Silence 22:59, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
Tim Vickers posted on my Talk asking for an opinion on the Evolution#complexity section. I'm sticking with my previous comment (above) that these discussions about complexity aren't real science yet. The classical writers about evolution did occasionally digress into abstraction and windy philosophy when they didn't have enough data. We don't need to follow their example. Complexity may be important, but we can't yet discuss it convincingly and be sure we are right. By comparison, arguments about total biomass are concrete and specific. EdJohnston 16:03, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
I agree that the discussions about mechanism are not settled yet, but the phenomenon itself is clear enough. This is exactly analogous to co-operation as Madprime noted above. We know that these two features of organisms are outcomes of evolution, but in neither case do we have a single identified cause. TimVickers 16:56, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
I'm surprised you would advocate such a false analogy, especially considering that past discussions have already shown that the "Co-evolution and cooperation" section is horribly malformed. Justifying one bad section by appealing to another bad section is ridiculous. See Talk:Evolution#Mechanisms and results. "Co-evolution" is not analogous to "Complexity", because co-evolution is an inevitable result of evolution and reproduction, and occurs equally for all groups of organisms, big and small; in contrast, "complexity" is a relatively minor aspect of evolutionary survival strategies, and complexification occurs disproportionately for a very small subset of organisms. Likewise, "Complexity and competition" is a universal aspect of the interaction between all organisms, a truly essential aspect of the interactive dynamics that sustain all life, big and small; once again, complexity is arcane and trivial by comparison, giving little practical information (and lots of misinformation, as demonstrated above!) to our readers. Moreover, co-evolution, cooperation, and competition are extremely well-defined, and very important for explaining basic aspects of evolution; the opposite is the case for complexity, a very abstract concept which teaches us very little about how evolution actually works (really, no more—or even less—than a section simply on "differentiation" would, since complexity only occurs because there is a survival advantage for differentiating to explore new niches; complexity has no special relevance beyond that simple fact).
As I've said above, "Complexity" doesn't need more than a paragraph; we can't have a section on every outcome of evolution, because that would require hundreds of thousands of sections. Only the outcomes that are particularly and uniquely helpful for explaining how evolution always (not just rarely) works are essential enough to merit a whole section. And as I've said above, "Co-evolution and complexity" is a horrifically malformed section that should be immediately restructured, either to "Co-evolution" or to "Cooperation and competition". (At this point, the latter seems much, much more practical for our readers.) -Silence 18:09, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
Um, I was comparing it to the "cooperation", not "co-evolution", the latter is universal but the first is not an inevitable outcome. I'm not really invested in this argument, but try to notice that difference -- in response to your accusation of "false analogy", I'm going to accuse you of a straw man argument. -- Madeleine 20:38, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
As a comparison between "Cooperation" and "Complexity", your argument is 100% irrelevant because there is no section in Evolution called "Cooperation". Rather than taking the east tact and just pointing out that your argument was irrelevant as phrased, I didn't respond at all but presented two stronger types of arguments analogizing "Complexity" with an actual valid section, even showed how even these analogies failed. A "strawman" is making your opponent's argument weaker so that it is easier to knock down; I did the opposite, and made it stronger so that it would be actually relevant to the article, and thus to this discussion. Claiming that we should have a section for X because we have a section for Y, when we don't have a section for Y, is an excessively weak argument. "Cooperation", on its own, doesn't merit a section in Evolution (and hence doesn't have one), just as "Complexity" doesn't: both are only useful to discuss in the context of other, more universal issues, not on their own in isolation. -Silence 20:48, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
Next time don't try to "strengthen" my comparison and then rebut your version. My "argument" isn't "100% irrelevant" because I wasn't trying to argue with you -- it wasn't even trying to be an "argument". All you needed to say was: "I don't think cooperation merits it's own section either, it's only there because co-evolution is universal and needs to be covered". And I would have agreed with you. But you set me up as an opponent and used hyperbole to attack me. I'm going to try to bow out now, I give up on participating in this page's discussion, there's probably too many cooks in the kitchen anyway. Madeleine 23:42, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
In the section you link to, you made some suggestions on how the section on "Co-evolution and cooperation" could be improved and then I took these suggestions and improved the section. I can't see how anybody could imagine that a constructive discussion that resulted in an improvement somehow demonstrates that the current version is "horribly malformed".
Your assertions that complexity is not an inevitable outcome of evolution are merely assertions. In fact, all the studies I have cited in the article agree that increased complexity in a proportion of organisms is an inevitable result of evolving systems. The only dispute remaining is on the mechanism. TimVickers 18:38, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
Complexity is a universal feature of all existing life as all existing life is complex compared to nonlife. The competition between life forms guarantees an increase in complexity. At the dawn of biological evolution when self catalytic chemicals were competing for available resources, there was the minimum complexity required for life. We have no existing examples because they have been outcompeted by more complex forms. The RNA world life forms and their predecesors were less complex and less fit. Saying complexity is not important becuse it is rare is wrong both because it is not rare and even if rare, being rare does not mean unimportant. Visible matter is rare compared to the universe's vast empty spaces yet that does not mean vast empty spaces are important and visible matter is unimportant. WAS 4.250 19:45, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
Complexity is best understood from an information science point of view. Simulated biological evolution provides a solid mathematical understanding of evolution from an evolution-of-embodied-information point of view. "The University of Chicago's Jim Shapiro (jsha@uchicago.edu), another speaker at the session, shows that an information-science approach is bound to offer many new details about evolution. As he points out, the results of 50 years of molecular biology research have demonstrated that the genome is not a passive blueprint, but rather a complex information-processing unit, and that cells have 'natural genetic engineering tools' for restructuring DNA molecules."[2] Also see Syllabus of Readings for Complex Adaptive Systems for the fascinating world of biologically inspired software that in turn inspires simulations of biological evolution yielding insight into evolutionary processes. An introduction to this whole thing can be found here. WAS 4.250 20:13, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
Are you two familiar with the fallacy of equivocation? You are using "complexity" in two completely different senses, switching from one to the other to defend the first. The actual section in question did not use "complexity" to argue that all life is more complex than non-life; the section, rather, uses "complexity" to compare relative complexity of different types of life, taking it for granted that some life is (relatively) non-complex—particularly microorganisms—while other life is (relatively) complex. It then argues, based on this assumption, that complex organisms are not dominant, and reflect a passive rather than active trend toward complexity—in other words, an incidental trend, where most organisms do not tend towards maximal complexity, but rather towards merely sufficient complexity for survival. This section is misinformation at its worst because it conflates entirely unrelated (and irrelevant) concepts, strongly reinforces exceedingly common misconceptions about evolution (), and provides no truly important information for understanding how evolution works. A section might be warranted in "history of life" briefly discussing the rise of complexity throughout life's history, but a whole section in "outcomes", implying that an outcome of evolution is for all life to become as complex as possible (rather than as complex as necessary—surely a trivially true statement, since all characteristics of extant life meet that minimum standard), is simply misleading, misleading, misleading. Complexity may be important for understanding life, but it is not important for understanding the basic process of evolution, particularly when we are just trying to give a basic understanding of it to readers. By trying to insert high-level discourse about general trends and abstract notions, you're reinforcing low-level misunderstandings to an immense degree. You're sacrificing actual usefulness in the article for technicalities and POVed philosophical tangents. Complexity may be important in the abstract sense, but it is not particularly important to evolution because evolutionary change only results in complexity as an incidental side-effect of truly important and universal aspects of evolutionary change (e.g., competition for limited resources, something we spend just about 0 time in the article on), and it results in such increased complexity extremely rarely: you might see ten thousand generations go by without seeing a meaningful rise in "complexity", because such a rise is only a side-effect of more important, general, and universally-applicable trends in evolution (e.g., the selective trend for species to diverge and differentiate so as to access new niches and survival strategies; complexity is merely one flavor of that divergence, not a distinct and especially noteworthy phenomenon, and the focus on it over other examples of the same trend is merely a result of bias). Comparing non-complex life to the void of space is as absurd as comparing people without six fingers to the void of space: since this is not an article about complexity, nor one about polydactyly, the baseline is not some irrelevant, meaningless void, but rather is the norm, and we need to emphasize the norm as being such, not push it under the rug for not being "interesting" enough. Wikipedia articles exist to inform, not to sensationalize and fixate upon the more (from certain POVs) "dramatic" effects. My assertion that "complexity is not an inevitable outcome of evolution" was not "merely assertions"; rather, it was the simple truth: each new generation of organisms is not more complex than the previous one. Greater complexity is not an inevitable outcome of evolution. Rather, a tiny subset of a population may be more complex, just as a tiny subset may be more simple; it is natural selection acting differently in specific scenarios, not an inherent evolutionary bias towards complexity, that may result in more complex organisms arising sometimes. To treat complexity preferentially brushes this crucial fact under the rug: that we don't need to discuss complexity in any more detail than we discuss any other type of characteristic, because it's already covered by natural selection and variation. Readers going through the article already know that organisms vary randomly (thus, some may randomly become more complex than others), and they already know that organisms with advantageous traits tend to become more common than ones with disadvantageous traits (thus, in environments where increased complexity is advantageous, it becomes more common; in environments where it's disadvantageous, it becomes less common). Spending an entire section merely to say "by the way, becoming more complex is sometimes advantageous. but not usually." is a monstrous waste of time and space for an article that's already grown far too long and still doesn't cover many of the most important topics in evolution adequately. If your purpose is merely to assert that complex life has happened to arise over the course of evolutionary history, then all you need to do is add a sentence to "History of life" and be done with it; if your purpose is to dispel the myth that there is an active evolutionary trend towards greater complexity (something that having an entire section on in the "Outcomes of evolution" section reinforces, rather than combating), then just spend a paragraph on it at the top of "Outcomes" and get it out of the way more quickly; only if your purpose is to misinform average laypeople about whether evolution always results in all organisms becoming more and more complex should you create a section under "Outcomes of evolution" called "Complexity" and waste so much time. If you really want to deal in this topic in so much detail, this article is not the right place for it: make a distinct article, like Evolution of complexity, we can link to and showcase your pretty images and statistical elaborations at, rather than overburdening this article with such a trivial, tangential issue. -Silence 20:28, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
To summarize: relatively complex organisms are the exception, not the rule. Most organisms tend towards the minimum complexity needed for survival, not towards the maximum complexity possible while still surviving. Characterizing "Complexity" as an "Outcome of evolution" through the current article layout, as well as spending an entire section in Evolution on "Complexity" as though there were some fundamentally distinct evolutionary mechanism or process that impels all life towards maximum complexity, does next to nothing to inform our readers (since I've demonstrated that we can present the exact same information in merely a paragraph, and present it much more intelligibly), and does a hell of a lot to misinform them. -Silence 20:32, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
You claim "Most organisms tend towards the minimum complexity needed for survival, not towards the maximum complexity possible while still surviving." Provide a citation please. TimVickers 20:57, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
Actually I remember reading an article of a scientist taking a reductionist approach to the minimal set of genes needed for life. As I recollect (I think bacteria and gene loss was his model)it was a small fraction of the total genome that was essential to my surprise. I can look for the reference (I think it was a Science article). I also think Venter sequenced the smallest genome known to eukaryotic cells as some indicator of what is essential. Size of the cell (some eukaryotes are only 1-2 microns) isn't an indicator of complexity, size of the genome or number of genes doesn't correlate with complexity, some bacteria have nucleus-like structures (planctomycetes) so even cellular structure maynot be that good of an indicator of complexity, myxobacteria can form multicellular complexes and contain protein kinases and G proteins similar to eukaryotes so no single domain has a monopoly on complexity. However I do agree with Silence that there is no inherant tendency towards complexity in evolution and the whole notion of complexity seems ambiguous. I also remember an article about the LUCA that made the assertion that gene loss has played a dramatic role in modeling life during evolution.Given only ten percent of present species have been identified and relatively few genomes have been sequenced, perhaps we have too little information to make any kind of global statment concerning the subject. GetAgrippa 22:57, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
Citation: All scientific literature in the field of biological evolution. Vestigial structures wouldn't exist if organisms tended towards maximum rather than minimum complexity. An increase in complexity requires more energy to sustain, and is therefore selected against. Only when an increase in complexity comes with a corresponding selective advantage (which is quite rare, relatively speaking, in the overall history of life) does it proliferate. But this occurrence is not distinct from the proliferation of all other types of selectively advantageous traits, and thus does not merit separate coverage. The notion of "complexity", as noted above by several people above, is too nebulous to provide much educational value here: how do we distinguish between traits that do and don't increase complexity? It's a fact that organisms only tend to become more complex when it is advantageous (or at least non-disadvantageous, when drift is the relevant mechanism), so the interesting and important effect going on, for the purposes of Evolution, is not the increased complexity, but the selection itself. It is misleading to treat exceptions as though they are the rule (as in having a section emphasizing relative "Complexity", but none emphasizing the arguably more significant relative "Simplicity"), and misleading to treat norms as though they are exceptional (as in having a distinct section for "Complexity" when we're only dealing with a bias-glorified normal example of ordinary evolutionary mechanisms working in unsurprising and typical ways). -Silence 21:17, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
The minimum complexity needed for survival increases over time as the environment that defines the minimum complexity needed for survival includes other life forms that are also competing and evolving - thus we no have have RNA bacteria as they were out evolved. The continuously increasing complexity of individual life forms and the interdependent ecosystem they define over long periods of time is a central key result of the process of biological evolution. WAS 4.250 21:19, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
Describing all life as continuously increasing in complexity is misleading, because such an increase is so slow as to be unnoticeable except in reconstructions of how life must have evolved in the past. The relevant lesson here is not "all life becomes more complex because this is an inherent aspect of how evolution works", which is the message that the article currently implies to our readers, and a part of past discredited theories like orthogenesis, not of modern evolutionary theory. Rather, the relevant lesson here is that co-evolution forces life to adapt to other life, an important feature that is not solely (or even largely) limited to vague "increases in complexity". If the purpose of the section is to illustrate the impact of co-evolution on raising the "minimum requirements" for life in various ways, then it should be (and can be, much more easily and succinctly) discussed in the Co-evolution/Cooperation/Competition section, not in a distinct section that fails to adequately contextualize this trend's significance. Putting this discussion under "Co-evolution" would not only make it simpler and shorter, but would also help convey the important message that this increase in complexity is a result of competition, not an inherent "progressive" trend within evolution, as Tim's original section implies. The whole point of the "co-evolution/competition/cooperation" section is to explain that biological interdependence you're discussing, so why are we trying to artificially segregate one of the main examples of co-evolution from the rest of that topic, which will only confuse and mislead readers? -Silence 21:31, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
If you have any citations to back up these opinions, Silence, I'd be very happy to read them. Particularly the statement that "this increase in complexity is a result of competition" and the statement I asked about earlier. TimVickers 23:28, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

"Only when an increase in complexity comes with a corresponding selective advantage (which is quite rare, relatively speaking, in the overall history of life) does it proliferate." "rare" is evidently quite common over geologic time, given the complexity of life today. Single cell organisms are not minimalist, and are willing to pay to sustain complexity. They don't chuck their stress responses, their ability to form spores, their tendency to divide, etc. once they encounter comfortable conditions. None of these are necessary to continue "living", i.e. sustaining internal homeostasis. Over a sustained period of time, in an artificially plentiful environment they may well chuck these mechanisms. But these are evidently not conditions that have been sustained until the present, because complexity and retention of that complexity has been selected for.--Africangenesis 00:51, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Nominate for featured article?

Hi everybody. I've finally finished dealing with the points raised in the peer-review and I substituted the latest tree for the old species-based one. Is this article now ready for submission as a featured article candidate? TimVickers 20:04, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

You want to make one of Wikipedia's worst biology articles a Featured Article? Remarkable. Just because you're satisfied with how well the article supports your microbiological POVs doesn't make the article as a whole sufficiently valuable for its actual readers. -Silence 20:28, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Your opinion does not come as a surprise to me. It is noted. TimVickers 20:55, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Your editorial attitudes are becoming increasingly unhelpful. Every time I disagree with you on any issue, your only response is, "That's just your opinion." Yes, and it's your opinion that that's my opinion; what of it? We'll only go in circles if you try to dismiss people's dissent rather than actually addressing it. Wikipedia is run by discussion, not by popularity vote, so this attitude (that one person's view doesn't matter because it's "just your opinion") is especially destructive to the principles of consensus editing. None of us is perfect, so we are all sure to be mistaken about a variety of things; the only way to work out which of those things we are mistaken about is by talking them over. When someone says "This article isn't up to snuff for being an FA", the proper response is "What can we do to make it up to snuff?" or "I disagree because X Y and Z; what do you think about X Y and Z?", not a sneering "That's no surprise." or "Your opinion is noted." Work on this article to bring it up to truly featured quality has barely even begun, and many issues have been ignored or brushed under the rug rather than really worked on. In many ways, the article is worse off now than it was when discussion began, in part because many of the ideas and discussions for improvement were abruptly dropped as different editors left and joined the efforts. Ultimately, these problems stem from a lack of discussion and listening, and the "just your opinion" attitude is only worsening that atmosphere of noncommunication. I'm sure I've also made mistakes that have contributed to that atmosphere (like being needlessly aggressive and confrontational, which I regret), but that doesn't change the fact that ignoring an article's problems won't make them disappear. -Silence 21:05, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

My attitude towards you is indeed becoming increasingly dismissive. To me, all you appear to do is complain interminably on talk pages and occasionally either add tags to the article or delete new content. I think it is generally true that if somebody only ever makes negative comments, people stop listening to them after a while. If you did actually add to the article or make constructive, positive comments on the talk page then my attitude will change. Until then I'm afraid you appear to me to be simply a rude, aggressive and unconstructive annoyance. We both share the same aim, Silence, but this personality clash is becoming seriously disruptive. To help break this vicious cycle of growing apathy on my part provoking increasingly strident diatribes on your part, I'd suggest that you contribute to the peer-review in a structured way with a constructive and specific list of suggestions. I promise that if you do this I will do my best to use your comments to improve the article. TimVickers 23:22, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

If you think I don't contribute to this article, then you simply have no knowledge of the history of this article. :) I've been an on-again-off-again editor here since 2005. My biggest editing sessions have been in April 2006, July 2006, September 2006, October 2006, January 2007, February 2007, and April 2007; see for yourself. At a bare minimum, I've written more of the lead section, history section, and evolution of life sections than any other user, and contributed significantly to every other long-standing section of this article; I'm also largely responsible, as its most in-depth and persistent critic, for the article being removed as an FA, which impelled many other editors to step up the revisions and improvements here. I'm not telling you any of this to brag or to assert authority; my say has no more weight than any other editor's, and other editors have doubtless contributed much more here than me. I'm only saying this to dispel the idea that I'm "all talk" or have no interest in actually improving the article. The opposite is the case.
For medical reasons I've had to scale back my contributions to Wikipedia recently, so I don't have the time to do many large-scale edits to this page like I have in the past because it would doubtless require in-depth explanations, reverts and revisions, etc. before many of the relevant improvements could be implemented. Editing + Discussing takes 3 times as long as just Discussing, and editing without discussion is unacceptable on Wikipedia for such a high-profile article, so I've decided to sacrifice the level of my direct contributions to the article—even though I'd honestly rather sacrifice the discussion and just work on direct edits.
I've provided constructive and (painfully) specific lists of problems with this article countless times before. (Several of these copy-pasted to form the basis for this article's "To-do" list, in fact, though many entries were malformed or out-of-date at the time.) I've also provided in-depth recommendations for ways to improve the article, to restructure sections and to improve clarity, readability, and accuracy. Many of those changes over the years have been acted on; many, particularly recently, have not, and I don't see the point in relisting the same things over and over again. But I suppose I'll have to. I just may not have time in the near future, for personal reasons; hopefully I'll be able to find time, but I can't make promises, as it would require another in-depth review both of the article and of past versions of the article. Surely other users can see major areas of improvement too, though? -Silence 02:06, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

No, I don't think the article is particularly good yet, well documented is not the same as well written. The pace should slow down for awhile to allow time for gradual improvements.--Africangenesis 02:36, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Based on this version of the theory of evolution [3]; someone has obviously contributed. Perhaps we should all look to the past to see how far things have come. Please, take a look at the link and see the power of the communal mind! --Random Replicator 02:38, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
If you mean to show how far the article has come, I think the past article is at [4]. "Theory of evolution" doesn't actually look bad, for a dab page: we might even want to consider making a page like that for our current Theory of evolution, which may perhaps be confusing in that it redirects to Evolution rather than Modern evolutionary synthesis. I don't think it's time for us to be patting ourselves on the back quite yet, though. Maybe after the article's been refeatured. -Silence 03:00, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
Both of you (Silence and Tim) seem like conscientious and well intended editors. In Silence's defense he (I assume male) has proposed excellent suggestions to improve the article in the last month or so (in fact he has an almost Vulcan logic that keeps things focused-I tend to more nebulous). I would also state that Tim is an excellent editor and he aggressively works to improve articles has been my impression. This type interaction is what I hate about Wikipedia-it is very distracting. Scientist disagree all the time, it is difficult to overcome personal bias, and some personalities just clash. I also agree with Silence that there is room for improvements, although I agree it has improved. During grad school we would have journal clubs to discuss papers of interest, rarely did any paper pass without extensive criticisms-despite the fact that most were excellent peer-reviewed articles in notable journals. I think this article will always fall into the extensive criticisms category, but I think it can still achieve some standard of excellence. I can appreciate Silence's frustration with this often painful process, and I also hope your health issues subside. Why not offer a handshake and keep on truckin. Just my opinion-sorry if it is unwarranted or unwanted. I should also say a number of "card carrying" evolutionary biologist have contributed to the article of late and offered very useful comments and suggestions. GetAgrippa 02:47, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
Excellent comment. You're right that this article has come a long way and that Tim has been an enormously helpful contributor to it, and also that it still has a lot to be improved, but that it can reach a level of excellence if we work at it. I apologize for any aggravation I've caused, and I hope we can start fresh to pool our different, but complementary, views on how to improve the article. -Silence 03:00, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
I totally prefer Tim Vickers and Silence arguing over a few points of science and style rather than reading some BS discussion on whether the Discovery Institute is lying to Boards of Education about Intelligent Design or whether 99.57 or 99.58% of scientists think Creationism is bogus. But can we all remember that we're on the same side here, and neither Tim nor Silence deserve attacks on one another. Anyways, major edits by those two and many others have significantly improved this article and cleaned up the garbage introduced by a few Creationist POV-pushing editors and more well-intentioned editors over the past few months. I like the article. Is it perfect? Well no, but please point me to a perfect article? This article today is more readable, more interesting, more referenced, and should be an FA soon. Please don't argue. It gives evidence to the Creationists that Evolution is really all messed up because scientists are always fighting!!!!  :) Orangemarlin 16:37, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
“If you mean to show how far the article has come, I think the past article is at [5]." See, even my efforts to be inspirational can be edited and improved. Now that’s the spirit! --Random Replicator 03:29, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
I realise, looking back in the edit history of the article that Silence has done a lot in the past for the coverage of this topic, however, looking at the talk page above and the recent article history I'm sure you can see how I got the mistaken impression that he was not trying to be helpful. I try to be as fair-minded as possible but persistent and aggressive criticism does get to you after a while. Due to both our diverging views of each other and my increasingly negative attitude towards Silence, this talk page has recently become a debate, rather than a discussion. I'm sorry if I became rude and dismissive as a result. I too will try to turn over a new leaf here and look at all the suggestions on this page in a positive frame of mind. A very good way of approaching this would be for people to contribute to the peer-review. This gives a badly-needed focus and structure to suggestions about the article and should make our discussions more dispassionate. Here's to a productive interaction! TimVickers 16:06, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

It... might be worth nominating it, as it would provide a great deal of direction and strong motivation to work on it now. I'm not sure if we'd manage to get it to pass, though. Alternatively, peer review might be appropriate. I do think Silence is being a bit overly pessimistic about this article - there are far, far worse, and it actually succeeds in explaining things, most of the time. Adam Cuerden talk 18:25, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

I have to disagree, nomination can not proceed until a relatively stable talk and article pages are achieved. Regardless of what i think of the article, and I think its pretty good, it has clearly not reached a point where significant discussion has ceased (as opposed to trolling discussion). David D. (Talk) 18:31, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
That's true, I suppose. How about a peer review, then? That'll focus our efforts a bit. Adam Cuerden talk 19:18, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
The peer-review link is at the top of the page, it's been going on for a while and we've got some very productive comments. TimVickers 19:33, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

"Complexity" in the Adami et al. article

Hi all,

I'm very happy to read of people turning over new leaves and contributing with a generous spirit and gentle tone. We are all pulling together, and can learn new perspectives and ideas from one another, no? The old advice for productive debates still holds: Ezehu chacham? Halomed mikol adam (v'ishah!) Who is wise? People who learn from everyone.

In the spirit of helping out, I read the article by Adami et al. to understand their conclusions about "complexity". For organisms of a fixed genome size, they define complexity as equivalent to sequence conservation, as assessed by sequence entropy; in other words, "complexity" is the opposite of "sequence diversity". Assuming a fixed, non-responding environment and an infinite population of organisms, genetic drift is impossible and natural selection will gradually lead to ever less sequence diversity (more sequence conservation), as the "more fit" sequences win out over the more various "less fit" sequences. With these postulates and definitions, complexity always increases with evolution; natural selection leads to ever increasing fitness, which is associated with ever increasing sequence conservation, which is defined as "complexity". Adami et al. illustrate their idea with digital evolution, but a more biological example is the high sequence conservation seen in lentiviruses such as HIV.

Adami et al. note that their definition of complexity may not be accepted universally, and that their postulates (such as fixed environment, infinite population) are rather gross approximations. They also note that common biological factors such as sexual reproduction and a responsive environment invalidate their conclusion that complexity increases monotonically. For example, a population of parasites or viruses might diversify their genome to cloak themselves from an ever improving immune system, thus evolving to a "less complex" population (by their definition).

Hoping that this helps a little, Willow 18:50, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

I think the main tidbit to take away from this is: there are lots of disagreements over how best to define "complexity", and your average laypeople are unlikely to really understand any of the many scientific views on what "complexity" is, making it pointless to have a section with the name "Complexity" (because it will not have a meaning for average readers that corresponds closely to the science). Another thing to take away from this is that a lot of this discussion of complexity comes down to semantics and to arcane statistical extrapolations that aren't really essential to Evolution. I have no problem with us making a separate article to go into this topic in as much depth as is warranted, but do we really need a whole section on this in this' particular article? We can't cover everything on one page! -Silence 19:28, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

As a positive way to incorporate both views of this section, might it work to have a section containing a condensed version of this information and some discussion of Cope's rule and the periodic bursts of adaptive radiation into a more general section after "Evolution of life" called something like "Trends and patterns"? This would avoid the possible implication that complexity is a universal outcome and allow discussion of other trends in the evolution of life. Indeed, the current end of the Ev of Life section does lead into this quite well. TimVickers 19:35, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

An interesting idea, but it still seems far too vague. Aren't most of the things discussed on Evolution "trends" or "patterns", one way or another? This section seems like it would just turn into a "miscellanea" section. The problematic vagueness of this topic is one of the reasons I proposed moving it to the lead section of "Outcomes" (the only section that seems suitably vague to accommodate a topic like "complexity"), but also one of the reasons I suggested trimming the section as much as possible in order to avoid going on too much of a tangent from the article's main thrust, which is to explain in broad strokes the fundamental process of evolution, not the specifics of how life has happened to evolve. I don't see a need, either, to go into Cope's law, when we're ignoring much more interesting and well-understood ideas about evolutionary survival strategies, like r/K selection theory. (Hell, we don't even discuss the gene-centered view of evolution anywhere in the article; that should give you a hint that you're veering into waaaaay too much depth on these topics. There's simply not room to expend more than a paragraph on complexity, if you want a realistic shot at FA for such an immensely broad topic.)
We can condense this information and incorporate it in a way that doesn't imply an inherent trend towards complexity (at least as commonly understood) simply by moving the current section up into the lead for "Outcomes", as I suggested. I don't see any disadvantages to this; it conveys the most important information, and does so much more quickly and simply. -Silence 19:53, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
The levels of selection are discussed in the last paragraph of the Natural Selection section, although briefly. However, if you read the last paragraph of the "Evolution of life" section and also look at the "Introduction to Evolution" article you can see how common these ideas of "progression" are. As an alternative, we could merge this discussion into the evolutionary history section as a general disclaimer about progress, which is already the main thrust of the sentence I added as a conclusion a few days ago. TimVickers 20:07, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Maybe it would be helpful to rethink our handling of complexity by looking at what questions our target readers would ask about evolution and complexity. "How is it possible for evolution to produce the complexity of life that I see?" "Generally speaking, isn't it unreasonable to assume that the less complex creates the more complex, rather than the other way around?" "Human society is the most complex thing, so we are the pinnacle of life, right? WAS 4.250 20:36, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, the problem we face is that however had complexity is to measure, we all know it when we see it. This obvious lack of complex organisms at the start of evolution and the presence of complex organisms at the present (such as the kittens my cat gave birth to on Saturday - I had to share the news!) has continues to suggest to people that evolution has a direction and is almost synonymous with progress. I like Willow's more concrete version below and think it could be the basis of a good unbiased discussion of this. Let's go and play with it in a kitten-like manner in my sandbox! TimVickers 21:01, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

2nd paragraph is a mess

The 2nd paragraph combines some traits increasing, with others decreasing, which would seem to suggest decreasing diversity, with gradual change and gradual speciation, without any reproductive isolation. It may be this bad because it is covering too many subjects at once, and yet seems barren without any mention of role of environmental change, and with one reference to competition. All of these are probably covered in more detail later. Can anyone come up with a better vision for this paragraph? Evolution shouldn't put one to sleep.--Africangenesis 04:47, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Indeed. It's amazing how boring we make sex and death. WAS 4.250 05:34, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
I've given it my shot. Near-complete rewrite, particularly of the second para. Feel free to discuss. One change I made in the process, mainly as a side-effect to improve comprehensibility and conciseness, was removing gene flow. Rationale follows:
I'm coming to the conclusion that we don't need to discuss gene flow in the lead. In a sense, it's too secondary: yes, gene flow can lead to a population's allele frequency changing, but only because separate populations have already evolved (i.e., changed their allele frequencies) in the past. It's almost trivially true that XY is different from X and Y on their own; the more interesting issue, so early in the article, is explaining why X and Y are different at all if they used to be one and the same. I think that's what most people come to the article looking to know, and we risk diluting that if we go into so much detail on later ways to mix and mesh allele frequencies. The lead was previously growing too large while becoming less clear on the basics, and one way to fix that seems to be focusing, for mechanisms, just on how allele frequencies change (at its most basic, drift) and what makes that change nonrandom (selection). -Silence 05:49, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
A couple points about phrasing. Natural selection doesn't "cause" anything. I had corrected this in the earlier language. I prefer something like reproductive success, to "more offspring" because more isn't necessarily better, although it can be.--Africangenesis 08:22, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
I think Silence is right because, in general, evolution (like speciation) proceeds despite (Mayr's contention) gene flow (which tends to homogenize alleles) and it only the special cases of HGT and hybridization that encourage evolution. Natural selection and genetic drift are the main points (the modern synthesis emphasized natural selection). Superfecundity or "more offspring" is the inherant state of life and the backdrop for evolution; reproductive success is more specific to the success of alleles (success of a genotype)in a population (hence fitness is the measure of reproductive success). I agree that people refer to Evolution by natural selection or evolution by genetic drift, but natural selection does "cause" nonrandom changes in gene allele frequencies specifically (but it is correct to say it does not "cause" evolution in general). GetAgrippa 12:16, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
My point is not disputing the role or importance of the processes of natural selection, but rather characterizing it as a "cause" rather than describing it. It may be as if "selection" occurred but our understanding is beyond that now.--Africangenesis 05:56, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Academic disciplines section

Since this takes a primarily historical view of the modern fields of evolutionary biology, would this merge well with the "History of evolutionary thought" section? At present, the history section seems to imply that all major advanced stopped in the 1930s-40s. TimVickers 21:31, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I wonder if we couldn't just put it in as an annotated section of "see also"? Adam Cuerden talk 21:38, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Extending the history section was one of BirgitteSB's suggestions in the peer-review. I just thought this material would fit well in there. TimVickers 21:43, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

I've reread the section: It probably should stay: It's well-written and efficient. But it has little to do with the history of evolution itself, and so probably isn't what Birgitte intended with her critique. Adam Cuerden talk 22:48, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
I think ti should be added in the macro and microevolution section that most scientists see no distinction between the two except for time. Meson man 22:52, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
I meant think not ti. :D Meson man 22:54, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Add proof

I found that the proof of evolution was not included in the article. Could someone please add that. Jesusinmysock 20:00, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Check out Talk:Evolution/FAQ#But_isn.27t_evolution_unproven.3F. --TeaDrinker 20:07, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
Not again. Orangemarlin 23:56, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Current thought on the beginning of biological evolution

Some current thought on the beginning of biological evolution (first cells and viruses) can be found here at this paper. WAS 4.250 16:12, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Public domain?

There seems to be a trend to replace GFDL images with PD ones on this article and natural selection. It is unclear to me what the motivation is, since GFDL was originally deliberately chosen as the license for Wikipedia. Has anything changed?

What surprises me even more is that this is apparently happening without consultation of the original contributors. Has it occurred to any agoraphobe out there to contact the contributors to ask if they would relicense the uploaded images?

The perpetrators seem to be User:Adam Cuerden and User:Wykis. The images in question are Image:Life cycle of a sexually reproducing organism.svg, Image:Antibiotic resistance.svg, and Image:Evolution is change 3.png.

Most seriously, I fail to see how Wykis' contributions are an improvement on the originals: the fonts of the originals are larger and bolder, and hence easier to read in thumbnails; lines are thicker; composition is clearer (why abandon the "circle of life" paradigm?)

Would anyone like to comment? Samsara (talk • contribs) 18:27, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

I'd suggest changing "Perpetrators" in that comment, it's not a good word choice. Is this a replacement of PNG or GIF images with SVG versions? TimVickers 18:32, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
It wasn't a conscious decision on my part to replace a GDFL with the Public domain, but I didn't see any reason to force licencing and attribution of such simple works. Do you like the new designs I made? If you do, I'm not sure I see the problem. Adam Cuerden talk 18:49, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
It would have been nice if you'd acknowledged the previous work done, see [6]. Samsara (talk • contribs) 19:39, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
Weel, the new natural selection one was originally planned for the top of the page. It got put in there afterwards, when it was determined to be too detailed for the opening image. Adam Cuerden talk 20:09, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
Also, it wasn't based on that; if you look up, you'll see it arising out of a black and white version, Image:Evolution_is_change_over_time.png, which itself arose out of a version of the diagram used in tehe natural selection section. Any similarity in the final result is coincidental. Adam Cuerden talk 20:11, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
Which you also authored and similarly did not acknowledge the inspiration for. Samsara (talk • contribs) 20:53, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't think that contents should be copyrighted, because they are findings of scientific research etc. You can't copyright the idea of evolution. I was not modifying the original pictures, or tracing them; I have done them from scratch, meaning that I am the one with rights to this piece of work. Hence it being released to public domain. I prefer to release stuff to public domain because it does not restrict people like GFDL does. wykis 20:19, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

That's all fair enough, but I question the need for replacing the images, and I question the quality of the replacements. If the objective had been to recreate the originals faithfully in SVG, I wouldn't have had a problem with it. Finally, you haven't actually answered the question why it wasn't possible to contact the original uploaders (in one case, me) about the possibility of converting the image to SVG and/or releasing to public domain. The reason we license as GFDL and not as public domain is because PD allows somebody else to make a derivative and keep it in a closed format, which is evil. Samsara (talk • contribs) 20:53, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
I think that a second choice after PD is CreativeCommons attribution. Otherwise, you are taking people's rights away. As long as the original content is available for free, I am happy. wykis 21:06, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
Let's not detract from the point: you should have contacted the copyright holders to see if they would release an appropriate version as PD. To do so is common courtesy. Samsara (talk • contribs) 22:10, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
I prefer Antibiotic resistance over Evolution is change. It is more detailed, provides the key for the usefulness of an adaptation (although maybe that should be at the top, or separated from the rest of the image by a line), and is already a vector image. I can vectorize Evolution is change, as I have offered at the Graphics Lab. But I thought it was a little too simplified as a concept, and some searching brought me to this discussion.--HereToHelp 20:50, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
I think Antibiotic resistance was disliked because of it talking about "final" states, and focusing on natural selection when evolution is any mechanism of change, including genetic drift. Adam Cuerden talk 23:07, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Editing semi-protected articles

I've been a member for many months, shouldn't I be able to edit this article? It says that anonomous people and users newer than five days cannot edit these articles. That shouldn't apply to me should it? - Henrik46 23:09, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Issue has been resolved. TimVickers 23:56, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Molecular drive

Some new material:

"As a third force According to Gabriel A. Dover, Molecular drive explains biological phenomena that natural selection and genetic drift alone cannot explain, such as the 700 copies of a ribosomal RNA gene and the origin of the 173 legs of the centipede. It is a process capable of changing the average genetic conposition of a sexual through the generations as consequence of Non-mendelian inheritance mechanisms. The dynamic of molecular dirve at the population level facilitates molecular coevolutionand adoptation for all biologcal funtions exibiting TRAM features (turover, redundancy and modularity)."

This is an interesting idea, but is there any evidence to support it? This section needs citations. TimVickers 20:46, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

No centipede has 173 legs (not without losing one anyway); all centipedes have even numbers of legs, though it varies from species to species as to the specific number. And it sounds a lot like psuedoscience to me, not the least because of the 173 legs mistake. Titanium Dragon 05:05, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
What's a "genetic conposition of a sexual"? Adam Cuerden talk 06:15, 25 May 2007 (UTC)


"adoptation" Gabriel Dover (kept having Google change adoptation to adoption, or hitting typos for adoption) - 45 ghits. Turnover, "Redundancy And Modulatory" - 0 ghits. It's nonsense. Adam Cuerden talk 06:23, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

What is nonsense is to ignore the possibility that "adoptation" is a typographical error. Dover's idea was published in [Nature] which is not from what I understand a nonsensical journal. Molecular drive is from what I gather accepted as a plausible mechanism to explain a real phenomenon, concerted evolution, although it may not be universally accepted. This article in Nature "Cryptic simplicity in DNA is a major source of genetic variation" Nature 322, 652 - 656 (14 Aug 1986), Diethard Tautz, Martin Trick, Gabriel A. Dover, refers to it and has four endnotes citing supporting works. See this one, too. My understanding is that the main criticism of the concept "molecular drive" is that it is simply jargon that stands in for three distinct (but very real) processes, gene conversion, transposition, and unequal crossing over, that all have the same effect, an increase in a gene's frequency within an individual (and not because of its effect on the individual's phenotype, so the increase in gene frequency is caused neither by genetic drift nor natural selection). My guess is that someone was trying to add to this article some cutting-edge (and thus, contested) science, but that the someone is not a native English-speaker and also a sloppy typist. Of course if you google typos, you won't find much. That is just a nonsensical way to check on someone's research. That said, I googled "forced evolution" and got over 22,000 hits. Slrubenstein | Talk 13:37, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
If you can pull together a section on it that's NPOV and makes sense, go on, but make sure it's of an appropriate length to the theory's acceptance. Adam Cuerden talk 14:18, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
Well, I agree with you it was terribly written! And perhaps disproportionate. Is there anyone out there who knows something about the role of gene conversion, transposition, and unequal crossing over in the increase of gene frequencies (GetAgrippa, are you around? Others who know about molecular genetics)? It sounds like it is important enough to include in the article that there are other mechanisms besides drift and natural selection that can have a significant influence on gene frequencies, but I do not know enough to know how to explain it clearly, and just how much attention it deserves. Slrubenstein | Talk 14:36, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
I've done a little searching: It looks like some of the claims are from [7] - but that source seems to make a hash of it to some extent: e.g. that description of centipedes having varying numbers of segments, each number of which much be exactly the right number for a different environment if natural selection is true. (why not just have continual pressure for increasing length?) Which is nonsense, and I rather hope not what Gabriel Dover set out. Adam Cuerden talk 14:47, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
So 173 is 173 pairs of legs - makes sense. The page you link to is critical of Dover but it seems to me that it is a straw-man criticism. Korthof writes:
Conclusion: depending on how the theories are formulated, one should say either that orthodox-neo-Darwinism and orthodox-Mendelism are 'refuted' and replaced or that both neo-Darwinism and Mendelism are supplemented with additional mechanisms. Dover is clearly non-orthodox in the sense that he rejects the 'gene as the ultimate selfish unit of selection' view of Richard Dawkins, John Maynard Smith, Robert Trivers, William Hamilton, Edward O. Wilson and George C. Williams.
First, Korthof conflates two different arguments by Dover: the argument for molecular drive, and the argument against "the selfish gene." Dover makes the latter argument in a book written for a general audience; I do not think he makes it in his Nature articles. It seems to me one can accept one argument and reject the other - they should be treated separately. Second, Korthof in the passage I quote is implying Dover claims he has somehow falsified Darwin and Mendel. But Dover does no such thing and earlier in the paragraph Korthof admits that Dover doesn't reject Darwin, he only claims that there are some situations (I guess involving gene frequencies) that natural selection do not explain. As an empirical claim this is surely true, and as a theoretical claim (I have identified a mechanism not currently in the modern synthesis) this is just normative science - I mean, scientists are always refining models via new scientific discoveries. In short, i would not take the web-page very seriously, although I agree with you it must have been th source for the poorly-written paragraph in question. Slrubenstein | Talk 15:36, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
I read more of the essay Adam found, and see that the author mentions Dover's reference to the importance of the HOX genes, and also this "Through Dover I realised that mutations not only produce piecemeal fine tuning of existent proteins and enzymes, but that mutations also produce and modify the bodyplan of organisms." This leads me to conclude that what we (Wikipedia) really need is to improve the Evo-Devo article - it currently is a pretty conservative account of embryology with some attention paid to new research made by molecular genetics. What I think that article is missing is a well-informed and thoughtful discussion of how the application of molecular genetics to embryology is actually leading to ideas that may have serious consequences for models of evolution as such. The concept of "molecular drive" may turn out to be small potatoes in all this, but minimally we can say Dover's work shows how te discovery of molecular genetics raises new questions and opens up new possibilities that were just unimaginable when the modern synthesis was formulated ... I think these lead towards evo-devo and hope there are people here who are willing to work on that article (I put in a little work and quickly reached the limits of my competence). Slrubenstein | Talk 16:07, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Epigenetics

Hi everyone. A few of us are having a dispute over at epigenetics on the importance of epigenetic mechanisms in evolution. Most of the contention is around a section on the so-called philosophical implications of non-genetic mechanisms. Anyway, as a non-geneticist, I'd be grateful if people could take a look and see if they can straighten things out. Needless to say, there's a big old discussion on the talk page. Thanks in advance, --Plumbago 19:25, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Because of this mess, I decided to rewrite the epigenetics material in this article, to make it more general and hopefully more clear. Hope that's ok. Madeleine 18:04, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Article looks bloody fabulous

I've been away for a while, and now I come back to find this article getting better all the time. Everyone should be very proud of the work that's gone on here! I only have two suggestions:

1. There's a sentence in "common descent" that reads: "The current set of species on earth are the final products of the process of evolution, with their diversity the product of a long series of speciation and extinction events." I strongly suggest we remove any and all concept of "final products", because evolution continues in lineages and will continue until the lineage goes extinct. A better concept I use when teaching is the idea of the current set of species on earth being analogous to current "snapshots" or "freeze frames" of their ongoing evolutionary trajectories -- which are by no means final.
Agreed, go ahead! Slrubenstein | Talk 15:38, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
2. I think that many of the images in the article are good ones, but some of the abstract ones are admittedly... well, abstract. It sure would be nice to illustrate evolution using pictures of organisms instead of squares and circles, although I know the Talk page has been over this repeatedly.. but even the chromosomal squash looks more like a Warhol painting than anything really organic. In particular, the first image (the "evolving squares" ) is based on a good idea, but it has the following 2 conceptual flaws:
First of all, it shows the red phenotype evolving out of nowhere (since there is no red in the earlier generation). Certainly random mutations could introduce a "red" phenotype, but with only two stages like this shown, it gives the impression that populations suddenly contain multiple individuals with the same heritable phenotype. This does not happen -- mutation and selection are required first. Also, the caption to this image does not fit the image itself, in that the image does not really show any trait becoming "more common"... except possibly for "orangeness", but since there are so many shades of orange, it becomes unclear. Thus, see my second point:
The second conceptual flaw is that I'm worried that this image might cause the uninitiated and uninformed to view evolution as blending inheritance, the way scientists did before Mendelian genetics... that somehow there is "yellowness", "redness", and a vast spectrum of "orangeness", and all these colors just sort of mixmash and evolve continuously without there being any discrete heritable traits that are being selected for and against.
I suggest a redraw of this figure that has only 2 or 3 discrete colors, with no intermediate shades, and that is consistent with the caption. If you want a color appearing out of nowhere, then there has to be an intermediate "population" that contains the first mutation.
This sounds constructive. Apropos, I personally think it is worth considering juxtapposing these highly iconic illustrations with examples from the natural history ... although it may get too cluttered! Slrubenstein | Talk 15:38, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

That's all I've got for now. Otherwise, the article is gorgeous and very well written. TxMCJ 05:36, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

I was presuming a multi-locus trait, forming a smooth continuum, so the first has, say, aabb, Aabb, aaBb, AABb, and AaBb, and the second's the first appearance of AABB, while aabb has disappered Adam Cuerden talk 16:09, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Evolution is a fact and a theory

I have added the following to the evolution article "Evolution is considered to be both a fact and theory by scientists.[8][9]" I have, as you see, provided 2 reliable sources. Some people have taken it out 2 times. I would like to open up a discussion so we can reach consensus some time in the future and get this over with. Peace.--James, La gloria è a dio 02:52, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Discussion is good. In observing the editing of this article, I have noticed that there is an increasing move from web-only references to peer-reviewed ones. I believe that people would like these standards to be maintained. Having a reference is nice, but having a reference from a reliable source is what's needed here. Samsara (talk • contribs) 02:56, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
At one time we had a section dedicated to this subject with a link to the more extensive article Evolution as theory and fact. In fact, a more complete expanded version of Evolution as theory and fact is in preparation with many more references and more material. I have just been slow at writing it. --Filll 03:04, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
I've been reverting your edits. I actually don't care all that much, since Evolution is both a fact and theory, but it has no place in this article, partially because it is slightly POV (but not in the direction you believe), but partially because it's a philosophy of science discussion that has not much to do with Evolution as a science, and lot to do with philosophy. Moreover, if you're going to edit an article like this, you need to format all cites in the proper method. See WP:CITET. Second, get consensus. Third, you probably should understand what you're trying to do, because what you're doing really isn't meeting your POV of Evolution. By the way, I'm just going to call you James Paul. I was confused as to who you were relative to the editing person. Orangemarlin 03:17, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
  • There are 2 compromises I can think of that I am willing to make. A)That there be a small section on evolution both being a fact and theory with a link to the bigger, more informative article, and B)That there is a section of related articles and one article in that section be to the article Evolution as theory and fact.--James, La gloria è a dio 03:22, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
You may find some of the answers you're looking for in this fairly inspired post by Dinoguy2: [10] Samsara (talk • contribs) 03:26, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
The "See Also" section of this article seems to of disappeared sometime recently... Homestarmy 03:24, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

The problem you seem to be having James is that you do not distinguish between that fact that evolution happens, and the theories about why this occurs. Once you get this distinction clearer in your mind this discussion will be more productive. TimVickers 03:29, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

If any of you have other compromises please bring it up. The faster we get this dispute over with the better. I would like to get it done in a week or 2. Peace.--James, La gloria è a dio 03:41, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
You are not taking a very realistic position on this. Wikipedia is not some place where you can come and make demands and be granted. We are not your parents. God bless. Samsara (talk • contribs) 03:43, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
If I add a section about evolution as a fact and theory or if I add a section with a link to Evolution as theory and fact will you revert my edits or will you leave them alone? --James, La gloria è a dio 03:45, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
James, this "dispute" is over when we reach a consensus about your proposed changes on this talk page. This might not take very long at all if you continue with your present attitude. Why not draft this proposed section in a neutral and non-confrontative manner on the talk page? TimVickers 03:48, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
First of all, in response to TimVickers comment, what "attitude" am I taking. If anyone has a attitude it is you guys because you are not willing to make a compromise. Also, I will make a make a article and will post it here tommorow. Peace.--James, La gloria è a dio 03:52, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
That sounds an excellent idea James. You would also do well to read the FAQ carefully before writing anything. TimVickers 03:58, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
Okay. I will. When I post it feel free to change it. Peace.--James, La gloria è a dio 04:01, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

It seems pretty clear to me that there is just a misunderstanding of the article here. Many people have this thought in their head that when you say "evolution", you are talking about "common descent". The failure to realize that, especially in this article, evolution is used as a very broad term, with common descent as a small part of it. We cannot say "this entire article is both fact and theory", and not be specific about what is theory. We cannot use evolution as a generic term and say this, it's just plain wrong. Wikidan829 04:35, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm not confused by the article. But I am confused by what you just wrote. I don't think very many people are confused by this article, thought it appears a large chunk don't like what it says. Orangemarlin 05:45, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
I read my last message to see where I used the word "confused", I couldn't find it. I'm just saying that people apply the word evolution to mean the theory that we came from apes, which is "common descent", and leave out the rest of evolution that has to do with heredity and genetics. You cannot make a broad statement like "evolution is both fact and theory" for a few reasons. First, who cares? How does this add to the article? Second, it's way too broad, as the concept of evolution has many parts to it, and is not restricted to common descent. Wikidan829 05:49, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
I used the word confused, you used misunderstanding. Same thing. But I disagree. I do not think many people come here to read about how humans came from apes. I think most intelligent people, even if they don't accept Evolution as a scientific fact, know that it has a broader context. Orangemarlin 05:52, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
By the way, common descent does not exclusively apply to human evolution. Orangemarlin 05:53, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
Actually they do mean different things, but that's okay. Speaking of confusion, I'm pretty sure we're talking about the same thing and you're not seeing it - don't get worked up over nothing. I do not come here to read about how human came from apes, because I know evolution is much broader than that. Some people, especially creationists, however, get the wrong meaning drilled into their heads and feel the need to disprove it by adding things like "this is a theory" to the article. If they simply read the article and found out that it's more than common descent, there really wouldn't be an issue here. One of the sites he linked to above, for example, speaks directly about common descent, but just calls it "evolution", which is a misrepresentation. Like you said above, it is slightly POV pushing. Wikidan829 06:01, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
Slightly? ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 06:25, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
First of all, I am not pushing my POV. I myself believe in common descent. If I was going to push my point of view I would say that it is fact. All I want is for wikipedia to be as NPOV as it can be. Also, please assume good faith. Thanks.--James, La gloria è a dio 06:30, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
I agree that the article could be slightly more NPOV, but the addition you are suggesting is not what will fix it. Wikidan829 13:37, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
I propose The gravity test which is that any general statement made about evolution or the theory of evolution by natural selection would not be out of place in an article about gravity and general relativity. Any statement about a observable process such as gravity or evolution should be general. Similarly, any statement about a well-supported and accepted theory such as evolution by natural selection or general relativity must be able to be applied to each. TimVickers 13:53, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
I'm not sure that applies here as far as you saying "observable process" such as evolution. In the context here, it has to do with macroevolution, or evolution from one "species" to another. I could observe gravity by jumping out the window. We can't observe macroevolution, only indirectly, by evidence left behind, which still makes it speculation. Wikidan829 13:57, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Your comments about jumping out the window indicate to me that you do not understand gravity, science or evolution. You better learn what you are talking about before you put more nonsense here on the talk page. We also observe gravity indirectly, particularly things like "dark energy". In fact, gravity as a fact and theory is under far more serious attack than evolution is. Gravity is far more likely to be drastically changed because of new science than evolution is.--Filll 14:10, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Sorry I wasn't more specific: I could readily observe the effects of gravity. Your comments indicate to me that you do not understand Wikipedia policy and guidelines. You better learn WP:CIVIL and WP:NPA before you put more comments here on the talk page. You passed the line at assuming good faith when you started calling my comments "nonsense". Wikidan829 14:40, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
I am sorry if you took offense at my contribution. You can perform some experiments that reveal some aspects of what we call gravity; for example, you can drop an apple and time its fall or weigh something on a scale. However, the potential existence of gravitons will be established by an indirect measurement. The alleged existence of gravity waves will be demonstrated again by a complicated measurement. The effect of gravity on celestial scales is inferred by our reception of photons here on planet earth and the use of complicated models. The existence of antigravitational forces is inferred by complicated indirect measurements. None of these more complicated measurements of gravitational effects is of something that is actually happening now, but of events long ago, sometimes millions or billions of years ago, just as our observations of evolution long ago are made. Some measurements of gravity can be made in a laboratory, just as some measurements of evolution can be made in a laboratory. Other measurements of gravity and evolution are not experimental in nature, but are observational, of things that happened before, and sometimes long before. We should not be afraid of observational sciences, since seismology and oceanography and astronomy and astrophysics and ecology and many other fields are primarily observational sciences. This is just another ridiculous red herring thrown out by people who do not understand science.--Filll 16:52, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
Filll, I do not think your comments were meant to be rude or anything but they could be taken as being rude. It is not a smart thing to say anything that could be taken as rude in a dispute. That is how disputes get worse. Peace:)--James, La gloria è a dio 14:35, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
Who is being rude? Please....--Filll 16:57, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
I don't think a section on the scientific vs colloquial definition of fact/theory is necessary. You don't see the need for a section on the distinction between fact and theory on other such science related articles (e.g., gravity, quantum mechanics, big bang, etc), and hence you wouldn't need it here. An argument for it inclusion in this article specifically is that it is a common misconception used as an objection to evolution, but there's already a section on this in Objections to evolution, which is linked. There is also the article evolution as theory and fact. GSlicer (t • c) 14:44, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
We had a special section devoted to this before in this article. To reduce space, to focus the article and to help it achieve featured article status, it was decided by consensus to remove it. You can find the removed material in the other associated articles as described above. See Objections to evolution, evolution as theory and fact and Creation-evolution controversy.--Filll 16:57, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
Further note: this also extends to how terms can refer to both facts and theories. GSlicer (t • c) 14:46, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
To quote the article we are discussing, "Evolution is the change in a population's inherited traits from generation to generation." This can be observed and has been observed. Similarly the effects of gravity can be observed and have been observed. The "gravity test" is a reasonable and simple test for NPOV between articles. I'm sure James's proposed section will conform to this test when he produces it. TimVickers 16:18, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
Right, but in that case, I think it would be more helpful to state "what is theory" and "what is fact", than to simply add one ambiguous sentence that adds nothing to the article but confusion. Evolution - as simply genetics, heredity, DNA, mutations - can and have been observed, this part is fact, of course. The problem is in the name itself. I can open up two dictionaries and get two slightly different definitions:
  • Biology. change in the gene pool of a population from generation to generation by such processes as mutation, natural selection, and genetic drift.
  • Biology a. Change in the genetic composition of a population during successive generations, as a result of natural selection acting on a genetic variation among individuals, and resulting in the development of new species.
The clear difference is the latter definition states that it "results in the development of new species", while the first states implies that it's merely the definition that's already in our article, which doesn't suggest such things as humans came from apes. The problem is, a lot of people, especially from a creationist perspective, have it drilled into their heads that evolution is strictly the latter definition, and feel the need to spin it with saying "it's only a theory". If someone is going to add something such as "it's a fact or a theory", it needs to state specifically what it is. A single sentence is inaccurate and misleading. Wikidan829 16:38, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
The latter definition is wrong, as natural selection is not the sole mechanism of evolution. Anyway, as speciation has also been observed, the point is moot - evolution under either the narrow, correct definition, or the broad and incorrect definition is an observable process. However, we seem to agree that any statement about evolution must be specific and clear, as well as being equally applicable to other subject areas, such as gravity. TimVickers 16:54, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
Thank you. That is all I'm trying to say here. Wikidan829 17:05, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
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