From rmg3@access1.digex.net Mon Aug 29 10:47:03 EDT 1994
Article: 74061 of talk.origins
Path: news1.digex.net!digex.net!not-for-mail
From: rmg3@access1.digex.net (Robert Grumbine)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: What's a 'macro'evolution?
Date: 28 Aug 1994 18:41:21 -0400
Organization: Under construction
Lines: 47
Message-ID: <33r3qh$4m2@access1.digex.net>
NNTP-Posting-Host: access1.digex.net
Summary: No such animal?
Status: RO

  The continuing 'macro' versus 'micro' debate is the fodder here.
Though that'll be hard to tell for a minute.
   
  Consider the puzzle which involves a sealed square case, 4 small steel
balls, and small holes/depressions in each corner.  There are two
ways (at least) to solve this puzzle (which is 'solved' when you get
a ball into each of the holes simultaneously).  The first is to very
carefully tilt the case this way and that, so that you get one ball at
a time into the holes.  While doing this, of course, you have to be
careful not to knock out any of the balls you've already gotten in 
to place.  This is quite difficult (for me at least).  The second
is to place the puzzle on a flat surface, and spin the puzzle rapidly.
The balls get flung into the corners.  Quite simple.  So, is the 
puzzle easy or hard?  

  Back to 'macro' versus 'micro' evolution.  What seems to be
called 'macro'evolution, in common language if not by biologists,
are things whick look 'hard' to do (evolve an eye, wings, ...).
But, are these things really hard to evolve?  And how would you
measure the difficulty?  In any case, it seems that the creationists
are in the position of someone who tries the puzzle, and sees only
the solution by careful tilting.  There are frequent computations
of how improbable it is that you could (by analogy) tilt the puzzle
in just the right way to get the balls in the corners.  That
would be _a_ solution.  But it ignores the possibility that there's
a simpler method.

  Recently there was some talk about work which showed that quite
complex eyes could be developed relatively quickly.  Perhaps that
isn't really an example, then, of macroevolution.  Shouldn't (question
to the biologists) the 'magnitude' of an evolutionary step be measured
by the minimum number of gene changes, or some such thing instead?
(May already be so, I write out of ignorance.  Ignorance, fortunately,
is curable.)  If something like that is done, then don't we also
lose the entire business of macro _versus_ micro?  (just a matter
of degree, which I believe I've heard some biology types say.)

  Extra credit question:  Are there any examples of something that
the casual observer (me, for example) would call macroevolution,
but which is (to a biologist) _simpler_ to evolve than something
the casual observer would call microevolution?

-- 
Bob Grumbine rmg3@access.digex.net
Sagredo (Galileo Galilei) "You present these recondite matters with too much 
evidence and ease; this great facility makes them less appreciated than they 
would be had they been presented in a more abstruse manner." Two New Sciences